


Infinitely Stranger

by qaftsiel



Series: Infinitely Stranger 'verse [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Canon-Typical Violence, Multi, Mythical Beings & Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-11-29 20:40:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 51,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/691226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qaftsiel/pseuds/qaftsiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent." - A. C. Doyle</p><p>In which Sherlock Holmes learns that reality is, in fact, far more wondrous than fiction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. how subtle-secret is your smile

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter was originally written as a standalone and can be read as such. Beta-read but not Britpicked; do let me know if there's anything I can improve. I hope it's an enjoyable read!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's more to John than one might expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit: John's memories are in italics now. Hopefully it'll be a little easier to distinguish between the two narratives.
> 
> Oct. 26th, 2014: Going through and ironing out some shaky spots. The story shouldn't change appreciably, but the grammar should be much improved. 
> 
> Am I the only one mortified by the sight of her old works?

The deer outpaces him with ease, but John isn’t interested in running it down with pure speed; rather, he’s more concerned with which way his quarry bolts. It’s easy to herd the animal with his intimate knowledge of the gently-rolling heathlands and wooded hollows that surround the tiny cottage he calls home-- every stone, tree, and way is as familiar to him as his SIG had been three years ago. Whether he’s darting between trees whilst careening downhill or skimming the treetops and spooking the quarry with strafing runs learned from the local magpies, John is utterly at home and in control of his hunt.

***

_It hasn’t always been an issue—if things had started happening any earlier than they did, John would probably be locked up in one of the bottom levels of Baskerville. Fortunately, he’s two months past sixteen when the first signs that something’s different start showing up, and then eighteen when things really go tits-up._

_It certainly doesn’t reflect well on his Mum. His Da is completely human, not a drop of... otherness in him. John suspects that it happened during the trip to Qatar his parents took the winter before his birth. He’s seen the photos, noticed the unusual golden colouring of the tour guide’s hair and eyes. He had been short and powerful, handsome in a leonine sort of way that John has no doubt would be irresistible if focussed on one target. John’s hair is that same sort of gold, even if he’s got his Mum’s cobalt eyes, but since his Da is blond as well, no questions have ever been asked. John only cottons on when strange things start happening after his sixteenth birthday._

***

The deer squalls, caught in the snare John had strung between two oak trees just a few hours earlier. He hates this part, but it’s necessary if he’s to feed himself without having to deal with the stares, whispers, and questions that inevitably come when he goes into town. The deer’s thrashing ceases with a single stroke of a well-honed, clip-point blade; John says a soft ‘thank you, I’m sorry’ before untying the snare and leaping into the boughs of the nearer oak to begin the process of tying the animal up. Working with sure, methodical strokes, it’s only an hour or so before the skeleton and offal are buried and the rest of the deer is neatly packed away in John’s bags for transport home. Slinging the pack over his shoulders so the bags hang at his sides, John changes, falls to all fours, and takes off at a ground-eating lope for his tanning shed and smokehouse to the south.

As he unpacks his catch, tucks the meat into the freezer, and begins to scrape the inside of the hide clean, John wonders what Sherlock would have had to say about all of it. 

‘How... primitive, John.’

‘Surely you could just go to Tesco and buy a perfectly serviceable steak, John.’

‘This is the twenty-first century, John, now stop carrying on like a Neanderthal and come tell me what you think about this corpse found on the bank of the Thames with all ten fingers chopped off and stuffed in its mouth.’

Not that it matters any more, really. Sherlock is dead, the media refuses to let go of its antipathy for him despite the courts proving his innocence, Lestrade’s been demoted, and that loose-lipped lump Mycroft had handed John a cottage in the middle of nowhere in an attempt to apologise for getting his brother killed. 

When Baker Street had become too painful to bear, when the reporters stalking him had started triggering attacks of paranoia and night terrors, when John’s last thousand pounds had been snatched away by the Chief Superintendent’s lawsuit, John had simply departed for the cottage and never looked back. Now he spends his days prowling the land around the little house, finding some modicum of peace in being able to let down his guard and simply be himself for once. If that means losing himself for days on end in routines and behaviours that most would describe as primitive or animalistic, well, that’s just what he is. Being human has too many painful memories tied up in it to be worth the effort anymore. 

***

_One early autumn morning during his first year of secondary school, John awakens to find that someone has turned up the volume on the world. It isn’t an absurd change—he can’t hear bird’s wings through a closed window or whispered conversations a block away—but his aural acuity is noticeably improved, not to mention expanded. The dog whistle Harry uses to call their basset hound, Howard, is the bane of his existence. He adjusts readily enough, though, and decides to keep his sudden case of supernaturally sharp hearing to himself._

_About six months later, smells blossom. Individual people and animals suddenly have noticeably strong, unique scents. John begins to note patterns: families sharing certain scent markers, biological relatives sharing certain other markers, different sicknesses having distinct smells. Perfumes go from irritating to migraine-inducing, and food. Oh god, food. Food is unbelievable and sometimes completely overwhelming (Mum’s experimentation with Thai soup drives John from the house on a regular basis). When they visit London to see Da’s brother, John learns that there are very rare people whose scents are utterly magnetic. Most women smell alluring, but an older lady with perfectly-coiffed auburn hair walks by while he and the family are on Trafalgar Square and John thinks of a blade of fine china with a core of steel dipped in pure gold. Later, in a little bookstore not too far away, there’s a pale, wiry boy that smells like moonlight, danger, and black opal. John doesn’t tell anyone about his intense sense of smell; he wants those scents to be his and his alone._

_The summer before he’s expected to start thinking about A-levels and university, John is out with friends on a camping trip. John doesn’t notice anything is out of the ordinary until he realises that the sun is well below the horizon and he can still see as if it’s full daylight. Colours are absent, but everything is perfectly visible. John carries a torch during the night hike to avoid scrutiny. When he gets home, he locks himself in the bathroom and shines a penlight into his eyes; he’s not surprised when his pupils reflect the light much like his dog’s eyes do. Like his hearing and his sense of smell, he resolves to never tell anyone about this new development. God only knows what would happen if a doctor or someone in the Government found out about his... powers, for lack of a better word._

***

Some human things are worth spending a few hours in the right shape for, though they’re not anything John would ever have imagined himself considering, much less doing, before escaping to the cottage for good.

John has to use a nose clip and a mask in addition to the thick gloves while he pours naptha over the hide. As useful and beautiful as leather is, the tanning process is full of strong scents that overwhelm even normal people. John, being what he is, had nearly passed out the first time he'd tried to tan hide without something to protect his sensitive nose. He’s got it down to a science at this point (‘Hardly a modern science, John’), though, and the leather is invaluable both as a source of income and as raw material for the packs, bags, belts, boots, gloves, holsters, straps, and various other items John uses around the house and his territory.

When the naptha has been sawdusted and rinsed away, John puts the clean hide into a ten-gallon bucket of lime, wood ashes, and water for soaking. It’ll be a while before he can scrape away the hair, but that gives him time to prepare the meat for smoking. He always makes the mix of spices, salt, and sugar before each hunt; despite his devolution into a more primal sort of life, he refuses to give up proper food. He’s pretty proud of the exotic flavour that the cardamom, cumin, and curry powder give the venison jerky once it’s done curing.

He washes his hands and forearms thoroughly before he moves to the kitchen half of the work shed and removes the neatly butchered meat from the freezer. Sometimes he’s struck by a memory of doing the same washing routine before working on bloodied young men back in Afghanistan; other times, he remembers all the after-case nights in spent scrubbing in the kitchen sink before stitching his reckless flatmate back together. He’s well-practised in squashing those memories back into their boxes. His time as a surgeon for the RAMC is over; his time as Sherlock’s doctor and blogger is over. Now is his time. Medicine and mystery don’t come into it.

***

_The morning after he arrives home from the Camping Trip of Night-Vision, he goes to the town library and starts searching for books about human senses. He learns about white reflection in the human eye and how it may indicate retinal cancer-- he dismisses this as a possibility because his eyes reflect light in a spectrum of colours—and then learns that humans expressly do not have the layer of tissue that creates the iridescent reflection and enhances night vision. That throws him a little. When he learns that humans absolutely shouldn’t be able to track day-old scents or hear dog whistles, he really starts to wonder. It’s still not worth mentioning to his parents or a doctor—he’s not sick or anything, at least not yet—but it does seem like something worth researching a little more. John goes back to find more books._

***

When John’s done everything he can do fresh out of a hunt, he cleans up a bit, sheds the leather apron he wears while he works, and leaves the shed the same way he walked in—naked as the day he was born but for the sheathed Ka-bar hanging around his neck. Clothes are something he very happily does without, bulky and inconvenient as they are for someone like him. It isn’t like there’s anyone out here to see him, judge him, or minutely examine every square centimeter of him, either. He’s not sure if Sherlock would have considered the nudity an improvement or a deterioration of John’s fashion sense, but John does his best to never, ever think about those sorts of ‘what ifs’. 

He stretches luxuriously in the fresh air, first on two feet and then on four, taking deep breaths and tasting the breeze. Autumn is on the air—the spicy scent of fallen leaves, the slightly buttery, plain smell of acorns, and the sweet scent of running tree sap are hallmarks of the season. He smiles when he hears the soft, hooting call of a hoopoe somewhere toward the house. Sherlock would no doubt have been mortified to know that John has devoted some considerable Mind-Bungalow space to native British birdcalls.

***

_The forays into medical texts start as self-motivated investigation, but soon John is checking out books on human biology, anatomy and physiology, human illnesses, first aid, and surgical techniques. His friends snicker and tease him at first when he starts keeping a first aid kit in his backpack. His Da is a little baffled but not opposed to it when John asks if he has a spare EpiPen that John could keep in his kit. When John’s mate Frank gets stung by a wasp, however, John can smell something sharp and wrong almost immediately and bolts for his bag and kit. Later, the doctors tell Frank’s parents that John’s EpiPen and quick thinking literally saved Frank’s life. They’re not thrilled that John had the epinephrine injector, nor do they spare him a very stern lecture about being careful before using a ‘pen on someone since there’s a very real chance of inducing cardiac arrest if he’s wrong about the anaphylaxis symptoms, but since John’s a kid and his Da has a wasp allergy too, they’re willing to overlook it just once._

_The first thing Frank says when John goes to visit him in hospital is that John ‘should be a bloody doctor if he's gonna keep carrying that sodding kit everywhere and reading those bloody huge books and saving people’s lives like that’._

_When he considers the edge that his acute senses give him in diagnosis (Frank’s incident is a case in point—John had smelled the histamine reaction before it had even become symptomatic) and his own interest in the subject, John can’t find any reason to disagree._

***

John is about to leave the shelter of the little wood to trot down the driveway when he spots them. Tyre tracks, deep ones, and recent.

Fully on alert, John sinks back into the undergrowth. He takes deep, slow breaths of the air, searching for any sign of carbon byproducts. The breeze is just stiff enough that most of the remaining fumes had probably drifted away mere minutes after being ejected, but a careful inspection of several thick patches of creeping vines rewards him with just enough of a whiff of trapped particles to tell him that it is emphatically not Mycroft who is waiting at the house, because Mycroft’s ridiculous black saloons are electric vehicles. If it’s a burglar, well, the poor bastard’s out of luck—John doesn’t keep much of value, really, and his medals and sensitive papers are carefully sealed under the floorboards of his bedroom and parlour. Even his medical texts are a bit too outdated to be worth much. 

Nonetheless, caution is advisable. Putting every advantage of his unique nature to use, John slinks toward the cottage with nary a sound.

***

_A-levels in biology, chemistry, maths, and health and social care make for a fairly difficult two years, but John buckles down and successfully earns an A grade in all but maths, where he receives a B. Not long after that, he studies like a man possessed and passes the UKCAT with a 3800. With those scores and two excellent interviews, he’s soon accepted at Bart’s and the Royal London School of Medicine. His parents aren’t thrilled about him going to school so far away, but John is ready to leave his little hometown and the quiet country life there. So ready, in fact, that he applies for a medical scholarship through the Army—that’s a guarantee of his education, a sizeable portion of his living costs, and a job that’s both challenging and fulfilling. He remembers the giddy rush that had buzzed beneath his skin throughout the entirety of the Frank Incident and for some time after. If he was going to experience that sort of adrenaline and challenge anywhere, it would be as a medic or a surgeon with the Army._

_The transition to London isn’t very difficult. Between the pay from the Army scholarship and the money his parents give him to get him started, John has almost no trouble finding and moving into a tiny studio flat on Finchley Road. It’s barely big enough for one person, but it’s got a kitchen, its own shower room, and is barely three minutes from a Tube stop, so John’s not about to complain. He’s overwhelmed and exhausted by the end of his first week of classes, but it’s tolerable, all told._

_Of course, that’s where it all goes to hell in a handbasket._

***

The intruder appears to be perusing his library. John pads to the opposite side of the cottage on velvety feet, springing to the rooftop in a single bound. He slips through the second-floor bedroom window (he leaves it open at all seasonable times for precisely this reason) and sniffs cautiously at the air in the house. There’s no sign of fire or gun oil besides the lightly scented mix he uses for his SIG, and even that’s in its place in the bedside table. He does catch a whiff of tea briefly, and when he pauses at the top of the stairwell to listen, he can hear the intruder shuffling from foot to foot in the kitchen as the kettle whispers and burbles.

Strange. Why should a burglar be getting into his tea?

Perhaps they think the house is unoccupied. John’s not present in the house during most hours of the day, and a lot of the rooms are relatively un-lived-in, if furnished. If he’s anywhere, it tends to be curled up in the armchair in the library or at the table beneath the kitchen window where he’s got a model of the HMS Swallow in progress. The lack of dust, the date on the milk in the fridge, and the model should be enough to cue someone in that the house is, in fact, occupied, but John has long since learned that most people are effectively blind.

The intruder’s shuffling moves back into the library part of the parlour, away from the stairwell. John makes his way down, avoiding the creaky sixth step, and tucks himself into the loo that sits just off the little hall leading to the kitchen and parlour. The intruder is still but not watchfully so, and seems to be just... looking.

That is, until John hears scraping and the distinct squeak of one of his little hinged-floorboard cubbyholes being prised open. He listens closely for more sound. He’s used a design similar to the clever little bird-call trinkets made by the American Audobon society to differentiate the cubbyhole hinges; the unimportant ones are loose enough that they give short, bright chirps when opened, but the really important one lets out a long squeal so high-pitched that only cats, dogs, and John’s ears can pick up on it. The contents of that one must never, ever be seen by anyone, especially not a burglar or any of Mycroft’s henchmen. He’s actually half-covered it by one of the bookshelves; the burglar would have had to move one to get to it.

When the long, high squeal reaches his ears, John doesn’t hesitate. Whoever it is will find out, whether he stops them or not, but if he charges, at least he can frighten them into silence.

***

_It’s a Thursday morning, well before sunrise, and John jerks awake with a yelp. His entire skin feels chapped and raw, and there are three sharp, prodding aches in his back like someone is viciously digging the heel of their palm under each of his scapulae and just over his tailbone. He groans, goes to rub his eyes, and yelps in shock when something furry and awkward meets his face instead. He jerks away from the unknown thing and learns it’s attached to him when it follows him over the side of the bed. He hits the floor and the pain in his back does some sort of strange, spreading thing, and suddenly there are feathers everywhere and his hands appear to have been replaced with cat’s paws covered in fur the same shade of dusty gold as his hair. John flails around ineffectually for a bit before he realises that the feathers are attached to wings, which are attached to John’s back and are currently spread wide, preventing him from rolling. He figures out how to fold his wings in (it’s like having a second set of arms, really), and he’s finally able to roll to his side and then to all fours._

_John looks into the full-length mirror bolted to the closet door._

_There’s a sphinx with his face looking back._

***

The burglar is surprisingly alert; he’s already turning to block as John uses the doorframe as a springboard for his attack. It’s entirely because of that alertness that John sees his face and retracts his claws before he plows into the man at full speed. 

As soon as they hit the floor, John leaps away as if scalded. “No!” he cries, unaware that he’s arched and bristling, wings mantled and rattling intimidatingly even as he backs away toward the far wall. “No, no, no! I saw you die! I saw you die!”

Sherlock is backed up against his own wall, glacier eyes as wide as saucers, his mouth open in a perfect ‘O’ of utter shock. He produces a noise that could be ‘What are you’ and ‘That’s not possible’ and maybe a few profanities all mashed together into an unintelligible soup, but John is well beyond answering questions, much less processing them. When the spectre of Sherlock Holmes refuses to dissipate, John bolts from the room and the house entirely.

*** 

_John learns a great deal in a very short time that first year of university. He learns that he can change back (thank God). He learns that it hadn’t been a dream when he tries changing the next day and finds himself staring at the sphinx in the mirror again. He learns simultaneously that wearing clothing is a terrible idea when changing shapes and ends up shredding a perfectly nice pair of trousers to free himself._

_He starts taking notes again, the way he'd used to when his senses had first changed. The first thing John does is weigh himself in his human form and in his changed form—he finds that, regardless of shape, his weight stays steady at about ten stone. He also finds that changing shapes makes him ridiculously hungry, so he tries to limit himself for his budget’s sake. He manages to get photographs of one of his wings and his tail and takes them to the library, where he finds a near-perfect match for both on a picture of an Imperial Eagle; his body is a bit harder to identify, but he’s pretty sure it’s either a jungle cat or an African golden cat (his paws are too small to belong to a lion). Regardless of species, the other shape is absurdly powerful, and some of that sinewy, quicksilver strength spills over into John’s human form. He’s never been so fit in his life._

_During the second weekend after his first change, John sets up a small camcorder in the flat and films the change process from a few different angles. Watching it is a bit nauseating (especially the part where the naked, pinfeather-studded limbs that form his wings just sort of... sprout-twist out from his scapulae as his clavicle and sternum visibly move and remould themselves to form a wishbone and keelbone), but he takes notes anyway. He’s a medical student; he’ll see worse at some point, so he figures it’s best to get used to the creepy things early on. When he’s taken all the notes he can, he tucks the cassette into a little aluminium lockbox that he keeps under a floorboard beneath his bed. He should destroy it (should destroy all of his notes, really), but the thought of not having proof makes him feel anxious._

_Classes get intense not long after that, so John shoves all thoughts of his other shape to the very back of his mind. It’s not until he graduates with his degree and enters training for the Army that he worries about his other shape again._

 

***

Distraught as he is, John only gets twenty metres away from the house before he can’t bring himself to run any further. He paces, wings still vibrating and twitching with distress.

Sherlock is dead. Sherlock is in his house, looking at all of his notes on his ‘condition’. Sherlock had been very, very solid under his paws. Sherlock had seen him changed.

John’s not sure what he thinks of all that. He’s the last bloke who should ever panic about something being impossible, but Sherlock had been dead on the pavement. There’s no doubt that Sherlock had jumped because that deranged bastard Moriarty had coerced him with one thing or another, but to leave John grieving and hollow for three years... there had better have been a damn good reason for that, or John’s going to chase Sherlock right off of his property. God knows he’s plenty good at frightening people into running in this form.

***

_Training for Army duty nearly blows John’s cover. He’d been in medical school mode for so long that he’d forgot how quick and strong his other shape’s influence had made his human form—when he and his fellow trainees are made to run a mile, he finishes in just under six minutes. He has to make up a story about being a running enthusiast in his spare time to deflect the excess attention._

_Once John remembers how to keep a low profile, though, he doesn’t hold back so much that he becomes completely unnoticeable. He’s always been competitive, really, and it’s not like anyone will complain about a doctor being a crack shot or being able to bench seventeen stone. Add the six-minute mile and John figures he’s got a frontline position very soundly secured._

_He finds that he’s overestimated the prevalence of combat involving frontlines when he’s shipped out to Kosovo almost as soon as he’s through training. He finds plenty of excitement, certainly, but most of his time is spent tending to contusions, lacerations, gunshot wounds, and other common riot-related injuries in the emergency wards of aged hospitals crammed with people who didn’t speak a word of English. He’s proud of the work he does, however, and he gets to play hospital bouncer several times while working in field clinics. He arrives home after one tour feeling good about his medical work but just a bit... cheated in terms of actual combat experience._

_Sierra Leone, which John volunteers for, is a mess. John’s sent to a little place called Lungi to do surgical work in a field hospital, but somehow ends up wading through the jungle with a reconnaissance team. The place is absolutely a riot of sensory information, overloading John’s ears, nose, and eyes so badly that he spends an hour jumping at every crack of a twig, whiff of cordite, and twitch of a bough. Even once he manages to parse his way through the sensory fog, his back and fingertips itch with the impulse to get up into the canopy or slip away into the brush on all fours; the others in the unit are so loud that even the local snakes could probably hear them tromping about. John feels exposed._

_As it turns out, he’s right to feel that way. John hears and smells the rebel soldiers a bare ten seconds before the actual ambush; it’s just enough time that he’s able to duck down out of sight of the enemy men as they close in on his teammates._

_The rebels are not pleased to find that one member of the twelve-man recon team is missing. As soon as John sees that they’re aware of his absence, he shucks his pack, kit, and uniform as quickly and quietly as possible. He’s spent over five years trying to be as human as possible, but now is not the time for human limitations—as soon as he feels velvety-soft pads blossom over his fingertips and palms, he drops to all fours and slinks away into the undergrowth, listening and waiting for an opportunity to turn things around... somehow._

_He hits on the idea when one of the rebels passes not even a metre from where John is crouched. They’re tromping through an ancient rainforest full of weird noises, large and dangerous animals, brush thick enough to hide a bull elephant, and creepy fungi. John is a sphinx. He’s a ten-stone creature out of Greek nightmares with a five-metre wingspan, alarmingly large fangs, razor-sharp claws, eyes with slit pupils that refract light, and a scream-roar frightening enough that John scared himself the first time he had tried it._

_He’s honestly not surprised when the first rebel he ambushes simply drops to the ground in a dead faint._

***

Angry, confused, and shaken as he is, John isn’t able to stay outside for more than thirty minutes. Sherlock is alive; being away for one minute longer is just not an option, not when he could be back in the parlour demanding an explanation.

Sherlock startles violently when John trots back into the parlour. He’s still sitting against the same wall, but the floor around him is absolutely littered with the yellowed pages of John’s old notes on himself. “How is this possible?” he asks as John picks his way around papers and notebooks. When John gets too close, he scoots away. “This isn’t possible. I’m hallucinating. Mycroft slipped me something. This can’t be real.” 

“Says the man I watched die three years ago,” John sighs, following Sherlock as he continues to back away. “Sherlock, I’m not going to hurt you.” 

Sherlock’s back bumps into the bookshelf. “How can I know that? You say you’re real but you always say you’re real!” He looks John up and down, crinkles his nose. “Normally my mind isn’t so... fanciful, though. What are you supposed to be?”

John has to chuckle at that. “Somehow I’m not surprised you don’t know that.” He opens his wings a little bit, turns so Sherlock can see all of him. “I’m not human, you know.”

The sheer obviousness of the statement seems to snap Sherlock out of his panic. He doesn’t seem to know how to respond, but he does actually look John over a bit more analytically. “That much is clear.” He tilts his head, lifts one hand. “You’re not possible, either.”

“Sherlock, who was it that told me that ‘when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’?”

“You’re a hallucination. You are, by nature, outside of such rules.”

John groans and rolls his eyes. “I am not a hallucination. If you’d just get on with it,” he grumbles, tilting his head at Sherlock’s half-outstretched hand, “you could see for yourself that I am quite real.” When Sherlock looks suddenly nervous, John’s patience snaps. Without further ado, he bullies his way past the detective’s hand and casually drapes himself over Sherlock’s lap. “Thinky git,” he mutters gently before beginning a rolling, thunderous purr. 

Sherlock seems to have experienced some sort of blue-screen upon finding himself being commandeered as a pillow for a warm, heavy, fuzzy-feathery, very real sphinx. He’s completely still, his mouth hanging open and his grey eyes wider than John’s ever seen them. A confused jumble of syllables tumbles out of his mouth, and broad, seeking hands come to rest on the leading edge and shoulder joint of the wing currently half-unfurled over his chest. “You... this... you’re real,” Sherlock finally manages to say, his normally confident baritone reduced to an awed, shaking whisper.

“Took you long enough,” John rumbles, trailing off as Sherlock gently feels at John’s scapular joints with both hands. “Seriously, I should be the one in shock. I saw you die, Sherlock. You made me watch you jump off of a building, you left me with nightmares of blood on pavement, and you left me to the media dogs. I gave up on being human because of your death, and now here you are. All a magic trick. Three years of being stared at in town, three years of being alone, three years of you being dead, all for nothing.” John never gets above a casual speaking volume, but the strain is there in his voice. He feels Sherlock’s wince more than he sees it.

“I... did not think you would suffer so.”

John says nothing, only glances back over one shoulder to fix Sherlock with a gunmetal glare. 

“There were snipers, John. Paid on a weekly basis to watch you, Mrs Hudson, and Lestrade. If I reappeared or if their pay got cut off, they would kill you. I... I was not surprised when you left London, but when Mycroft told me you’d just... moved in and then vanished, I nearly broke cover. You didn’t return for a month. I feared... I feared that you’d pre-empted the sniper’s mission.”

John shifts his position so he can gently lay his head over Sherlock’s heart. “I gave up on humanity, but never life.” Sherlock’s hands immediately go to his shoulders, carding through the fur-to-feather gradient as delicately as if handling spun glass. “You’re here, though. You’ve taken care of the snipers?”

“I found Mrs Hudson’s assigned killer and took care of him two years ago, as well as the backup gunman in case the first left or died. Lestrade’s assassin and backup killer were disposed of last year.” Sherlock’s hands go tense for a moment. “Yours... I have killed his backup, but the original... he’s posing as one of the tabloid hacks that skulk around waiting for you in the village. I can’t get him away from witnesses.”

John grumbles. Of course one of the four reporters who routinely lay in wait to ambush him for more dirt on the ‘fake genius’ is actually a hired gunman waiting for the signal to kill him. Tabloid paparazzo, hired assassin... no difference, really, just a slightly different target. Small wonder he hadn’t picked up on it. “So which one is he, and when is his pay due?”

Sherlock sighs. “The tall blonde with the decidedly simian visage. He’s a clever one with prosthetics; he was Moriarty’s right hand man. His name is Sebastian Moran, and his pay was due three days ago.”

***

_If there’s one man that John hates more than he thought he could ever hate anyone, it’s Colonel Sebastian Moran._

_John’s been put in charge of the medical facilities at FOB Inkerman for a month or so until a replacement is found; Dr Roylott, the previous supervising official, had been killed en route from a meeting at Bastion. Normally John is a frontline medic—he isn’t the sort of bloke who enjoys paperwork or inventory sheets—but he’s the only one qualified enough to keep the place up and running, and he’s not about to let the base’s medical facilities languish under rookie supervision._

_Things go a bit pear-shaped as soon as he takes his first inventory of their supplies. They’re supposed to have three unopened crates of transdermal and intravenous fentanyl, going by the shipment confirmation records, but John can only locate one. He discovers the same problem with almost every narcotic on the list, as well as the benzodiazepine and other, milder anti-anxiety drugs. He asks his nurses and surgeons about the missing drugs, but no one seems to even realise that more than half of their supplies have gone missing. When he digs a bit more and inventories most everything else he can think of, he discovers that their supply of fresh sharps and intravenous drips are considerably more depleted than they should be._

_John has a bad feeling about the missing drugs, drips, and sharps. He’s heard about soldiers developing addictions due to lax prescription oversight, but this is looking less like over-prescription and more like something very ethically bankrupt. He spends a night checking prescription and use records for the past month; by the next morning, he’s very sure that there’s something Very Not Good happening. He decides to keep his conclusions to himself, however; if any of the nurses or surgeons are involved, he’s got to keep his suspicions well-hidden if he’s going to find more conclusive proof._

_A week goes by and new shipments arrive. John is personally taking inventory of the stock in the storeroom when three men wearing ill-fitting scrubs wander in. They seems surprised to see him; after some heated, muttered debate, they approach him. “The Colonel sent us to get some, uh, stuff for one of the other FOBs,” says the burliest of the lot, crossing his arms and lifting his chin in an effort to seem even taller than he already is. “Said we should hurry, it’s pretty critical.”_

_John raises an eyebrow. “Do you have the paperwork?” he asks. There isn’t any paperwork, in all actuality; John’s just hoping to take advantage of their surprise at finding him here to trick them into some sort of slip. “I’ll call Colonel Morstan and ask him if he sent any of it to me ahead of you.”_

_While the apparent leader and his second-in-command merely shrug, the third goes pale. “No, uh... no sir! Talk to Colonel Moran, sir, he’s who sent us, he is, he’ll send along the--” He’s cut off abruptly when Head Goon steps on his foot._

_Much like his effort to silence his idiot compatriot had been obvious and poorly executed, Head Goon does a less-than-decent job of working with the slip-up. “Yep, Colonel Moran, sir, sent us along. We just forgot the papers, we did, so we’ll... just go get those. And the Colonel. Sorry we forgot all of that, sir, they just need the stuff soon, right, yessir, we’ll return, sir, with the papers and the Colonel...” He trails off awkwardly and chivvies his two wingmen out of the storeroom; John clearly hears a smack and a yelp of protest through the flimsy door and thin walls. “You fuckwit! Colonel’s gonna kill us!”_

_“But if he talked to Morstan, then Morstan’d know something was up!” protests the loose-lipped man. “You know the Colonel and him don’t get on! He’d do anything to get the Colonel off the base, and then where’m I to get me money and me soothers?”_

_“Fuck your ‘soothers’, you’re not supposed to sample the wares to begin with, an’ what about my women, where’m I gonna get any...”_

_Loose-Lips’ scolding fades out of John’s hearing range as the men turn the corner at the end of the corridor outside the storeroom. John sits back and purses his lips, thoughtful._

_He knows that Colonel Morstan will probably be free of any trouble; the man is pathologically straitlaced and would probably have an apoplexy if he heard from John about people trying to pilfer supplies. Colonel Moran, however, is another story. The scuttlebutt on base about the man is singularly lurid; while John hasn’t personally witnessed anything, he’s seen hints of a violent temper and a certain disregard for others, particularly when Moran feels he's being challenged or disrespected._

_John decides to observe the three and Moran if they really are going to come back to try and ‘talk’ with him. Frankly, he’d rather not paint a target on his own back, and watching Moran could give him a better idea of how to proceed. Morstan won’t be able to do anything until he has enough paperwork, procedure, and forms to satisfy a Vogon; if there really is some sort of drug market on base, John figures it’s his duty as a doctor to take care of it as soon as possible, protocol be damned. He’ll have to go over Colonel Morstan’s head, but it’ll be worth it if it’ll cut Moran off._

***

“Moran, you say?”

Sherlock nods, tilts his head. “You know him.”

John’s grin is sharp-toothed and predatory. “I know him and owe him, Sherlock. He’s the one that put a bullet through my shoulder.” The scar is still stark against his left shoulder, but in his natural form, the scarring and nerve damage barely impinge upon his range of motion at all. Of course, John couldn't have told anyone in the Army about being anything but human, so discharge had been his only option. “I think he was a little upset that I’d blown the whistle on his little pharmaceutical trade, which then resulted in the human trafficking ring he was a part of being exposed, and you bet he was pissed about losing that much money. Defied a court-martial and dishonourable discharge to hunt me down in the field.” 

John leaps to the back of the sofa and scales the nearest bookshelf with a limber spring. He wedges a claw under a latch in the top of the shelf nearest the outside wall of the room; a panel in the ceiling slides aside when John flips the latch. He grins at Sherlock, who looks caught between being impressed and concerned. “John... do you honestly have secret crawlspaces in the walls and ceilings of this house?”

“Mycroft gave it to me. They were here when I arrived.” Granted, the floorboard caches, singing hinges, pistol-trapped decoy safes, peepholes disguised as fire sprinklers, and nightingale floors were all his additions, but the unrelenting press attention and slightly creepy messages from several disgruntled, recently freed criminals had aggravated his post-Moriarty paranoia. “I’m not good enough at carpentry to make safe crawlspaces or the little latch mechanisms, anyway.” He hops up into the ceiling space and beckons for Sherlock to follow.

The panel slides shut with a gentle push of John’s paw after Sherlock folds himself into the low, dark crawlspace. “Explain why we are hiding, then, if you have a score to settle.”

The chirp-chrrrrr of the kitchen window seems absurdly loud in the close space. “Because, Sherlock, the last thing anyone expects in a cute little Woolmer country home is for a fucking sphinx to drop out of the ceiling onto their heads screaming bloody murder.” 

***

_By the time Moran has started to turn in response to the thunderous CLAP of John’s wings snapping open, John’s already on top of him. He catches the Colonel with both forepaws, claws tearing messy gashes across his face and the back of his head._

_“Thief of mothers and children!” John shrieks, doing his best to sound as inhuman as possible. “Corrupter of healers!” He’s really quite good at it, seeing as he sounds like an extremely large, extremely angry mountain lion._

_Moran escapes John’s grip when they hit the ground; John lets him get a few seconds head start before taking to the night air again. Climbing is easy at this time of night; the air is cold and thick near the ground, not rarefied and searing like it is during the day. When John’s gained enough height, he crooks his wings into a shallow dive, arrowing after the scrambling, panting Colonel._

_It’s like playing tenpins with hollow plastic pins and a granite bowling ball, John thinks as he knocks Moran to the ground with a fly-by swat of one paw. Moran scrambles to his feet and tries to start running again, but John’s already banking in for another flying bull rush. All four paws connect with Moran this time, and John worries that he might have actually killed the man when he hits the ground with a truly ugly crunch._

_Well, worries more for his own sake. He’ll never be able to go out for a night flight again if they find Moran dead by some sort of horrific animal attack. Moran? Well, after discovering the drug pilfering and doing some surveillance, John discovered that Moran was actively participating in a sex trafficking ring in cooperation with the Taliban. Women and children alike had been caught and shipped off like cattle to buyers around the world, all with “borrowed” Army vehicles, supplies, and money. Moran’s life... well, John just isn’t particularly worried about Moran’s life. Not when he’d murdered, dehumanised, and destroyed dozens if not hundreds of innocents._

_Moran begins to struggle and wheeze, letting out pathetic whines in between gasping breaths. John crouches low atop his back and lets out a rumbling growl. “You will leave this place, defiler,” he snarls, so close to the bloodied back of Moran’s neck that the Colonel can surely feel his breath curling over open wounds. “You will leave, or we will crack your ribs to clean our teeth... and then, if we are feeling... magnanimous, we will let you die.”_

_Moran’s terrified keening is almost as satisfying as the scent of piss is disgusting. John takes off without another word._

***

It’s a deliciously satisfying variety of déjà vu as John plummets through the ceiling, claws outstretched and reaching for Moran’s face as the man turns to look up at the commotion. The wicked grin that spreads over John’s face when he sees recognition in Moran’s cold, cold eyes is probably manic and more than a bit not good, but oh how he relishes the feeling of his claws parting old scars anew. It’s almost as sweet as Moran’s horrified shriek.

“Just like the old days, isn’t it, Moran?!” John crows as he rides Moran to the floor and swats away the overturned sniper rifle. “Does it feel good to have all your worst fears brought to life?”

To his credit, Moran finds the bollocks to start snarling and fighting back. “I left! I left, you fucking thing! What the fuck do you want from me!?” He manages to turn over in an effort to grapple John; when he actually looks at John’s face, though, his snarl goes slack in shock. “You! You!” he shrieks, redoubling his efforts. “You’re John fucking Watson! You’re the fucking toadie that ruined my bloody business, you’re the reason Jim is dead, and you’re the freak that ruined my face?!”

John fights Moran down; Moran has a weight advantage but John has vicious claws and teeth, not to mention nearly three years of practice pinning down prey in this form. “Damn right I am!” he roars back, claws digging deep into Moran’s forearms. “You’re the fucker behind the drug addictions of three hundred men! You’re the bastard that colluded with the enemy to ship off women and children like chattel to be raped, beaten, and worked like dogs! You’re the prick that hired a Taliban sniper to shoot me because I took away your toys!” He uses a hindpaw to rake at Moran’s thigh, fending off the man’s efforts to shake him. Moran howls. “You, Moran, you are the one who partnered up with the soulless fucking monster that forced my best friend to jump off a building!”

“He’s not fucking dead!” Moran rasps as he tears his right arm free of John’s pin and lands an awkward punch to the face. It leaves John more blood-spattered than hurt. “He’s coming here, I swear to God I’m going to fucking fix him for good, because he didn’t die when he should have!”

“Stay away from Sherlock Holmes!” John screams, dropping a vicious swat across Moran’s face. There’s a nasty crunch as the blow wrenches Moran’s head, and the man falls suddenly limp.

Sides heaving, John stumbles away. Watching suddenly seems undesirable; he’s seen deaths by broken neck and doesn’t want to see another, even if it’s a well-deserved fate. He tunes out the weak, barely-audible scratches and squeaks coming from behind him.

A few minutes later, there’s a soft rustle of cloth and light footsteps. “He’s gone, John.” 

John sighs. “I know.”

A large, gentle hand comes to rest atop one of John’s wings. “You’re covered in blood. Come to the shower. Mycroft will undoubtedly be pushing his fat nose into things within the hour; I would rather you not be covered in damning evidence.”

John doesn’t comment on the futility of trying to dupe a Holmes; instead, he lets Sherlock guide him upstairs to the master bath. It’ll be good to be clean of Moran, physically and otherwise.

About thirty minutes later, John’s clean, feeling much better about things, and in his human form. Mycroft and his team are supposedly arriving in five to ten minutes, so John’s wearing actual clothing for the first time in about two months. “Honestly, Sherlock. Do we have to let him in? I could just bury it. Or burn it. Or drop it in the Rother, it’s pretty deep not too far from here. Really.” He plucks irritably at the tags in his shirt and the buttons on his cuffs. 

Sherlock rolls his eyes for the twenty-fourth time since he’d finished his call to Mycroft to request a cleanup team. “Such disposals leave entirely too much evidence, John, and a fire large and hot enough to burn a corpse that big would attract too much attention. You must remember that you essentially live on a national park. Wardens are terribly nosey creatures.” He bats John’s hands away from his cuff buttons; the stitches are beginning to fray under his nervous picking. “Stop that. You fidget me beyond endurance.”

“Oh, dear, do forgive me, Sir Holmes, for overcoming your delicate endurance. How ever shall I make it up to you?” John ceases his fussing long enough to flap his hands dramatically. 

Eye-roll number twenty-five. “Keep your sodding clothes on until my brother is gone and all bugs have been removed,” Sherlock growls. “Or do you want your little... eccentricity coming to the attention of the British government?”

“It’s rather too late for that, dear brother,” a light, supercilious tenor purrs from the direction of the house. John and Sherlock both whirl; Mycroft is leaning in the open front door, ubiquitous umbrella hooked on one elbow. “John’s peculiarity has been known to me since first we met.”

John finds himself being manhandled behind a bristling Sherlock. “You will not touch him, Mycroft!” 

With a sigh so delicately disdainful that John couldn’t help but wonder how many years of practise it had taken to perfect, Mycroft steps out from the doorway and tap-taps his way down the front walk. “Tut tut, Sherlock, such hostility toward your own brother!” He comes to a halt at the end of the walk. “John and his kin are elegant and striking, yes, but they are anything but novel. I have no need of him for anything you are imagining.”

Sherlock snarls and stomps into the house; Mycroft seems perfectly unbothered by the ensuing racket that is Sherlock attempting to forcibly remove the cleanup team from the building. Instead he turns his focus to John.

“You have questions, John.”

John nods. It’s a bit overwhelming to suddenly learn that his secret’s been out for nearly five years, but it does explain the lack of snooping by Mycroft’s teams over the past three. “You’ve known since that warehouse, then?” 

Mycroft nods.

“How?” 

Mycroft smiles. Where there had been a perfectly mundane set of human teeth previously, there’s a glittering, white array of shark-sharp fangs. “Let us call it personal experience, John. Let us call it personal experience.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title for this chapter is from Oscar Wilde's "The Sphinx".
> 
>  
> 
> http://zundaerazylym.tumblr.com/image/44149854675 John's wings. Class got dull.


	2. and sing me all your memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title again from Wilde's "The Sphinx".

John is pulled out of a deep sleep by shouting from downstairs. He’s out of bed and half-running, half-falling down the stairs before he’s even entirely awake, nightmarish scenarios of backup backup assassins coming after Sherlock running through his head. 

He finds Sherlock on the floor of the library, wide-eyed, panting, and tangled in his blanket at the foot of the couch. He’s not thrashing or trying to escape; he’s just... lying there and staring blankly at the floor, seemingly exhausted.

John knows that feeling far too well. 

Rustling his wings so Sherlock knows he’s there, John approaches slowly and carefully. He stops moving when Sherlock’s gaze flicks upward to meet his, but he’s by the detective’s side in a heartbeat when one large, elegant hand extricates itself from the blanket and reaches for John. Up close, John can smell the bitter, salty tang of tears and fear-sweat; it seems out of place set against Sherlock’s natural scent. “All right, then. Come on, you, up you get. The floor’s no place for recovering from a terror, I should know.” When Sherlock obeys almost automatically, John feels a twinge of real worry. He’s not sure he wants to know what it would take to reduce such a ferocious intellect to numb compliance, but it can’t be anything good. 

Sherlock reaches blindly when John moves away from his hand to readjust the blanket. “Don’t go. Don’t go, John, don’t go,” he whispers, almost childlike.

John abandons personal space for protective instinct and climbs onto the couch as well, folding one wing over the detective like a feathery blanket as he tucks himself into a too-skinny side. Sherlock curls into him almost immediately, burying face and hands into the thick fur and downy feathers of John’s side. 

Quiet reigns for a long time as Sherlock’s breathing and heart rate slowly come back down to normal. When his hands finally loosen their grip on his fur, John turns and presses the tip of his nose to the top of Sherlock’s head. “Tell me how you did it, Sherlock.” The ‘amaze me’ goes unspoken but understood; John’s tone is solicitous and warm. “Tell me where you’ve been.”

It’s another long stretch of silence before Sherlock begins, but John is patient. He knows how it can take time to dredge up the will to tell the tale, to make oneself vulnerable by exposing the cause of the pain, the anxiety, and the nightmares.

Apparently Sherlock had been expecting an escalation for some time; the pool would have been the final confrontation had Moriarty not been distracted by the phone call. As it turns out, the call had been from Irene Adler, whose information had much more potential to cause widespread chaos and scandal. With chaos and scandal came still more opportunities for Moriarty to gain influence over those his machinations had made vulnerable, and with influence over the powerful came more opportunities to sow yet more chaos and scandal.

“An ugly spiral,” John comments. “Why did he do it, anyway?”

“Because he could.” Sherlock replies simply. “Because he fancied himself some sort of god. He played with people like a child with a magnifying lens and an anthill. He dabbled in trafficking, bribery, and Ponzi schemes because more money would buy him a better magnifying glass with which to burn his playthings. He then discovered that he could manipulate the ants into doing his will, and that blossomed into a whole new game to play—give an ant a glass of his own and whisper in his ear, turning him against his fellows.”

The full-body shudder that rattles John’s feathers is entirely involuntary. “Christ,” he whispers. “And he fixated on you because you turned a lens on him?”

“No. He fixated on me because he saw another boy with a lens.”

The growl that escapes John is also entirely involuntary. “Bullshit!” he cries, on his feet and standing over Sherlock in the blink of an eye. “You’re not like him! I won’t believe it!”

Sherlock rolls his eyes and sits up, forcing John to back off. “John. I said he saw another boy with a lens. I did not say that I was using the lens in the same fashion. Frying ants to make oneself feel clever is pedestrian and boring; anyone can do it. Observing the ants objectively and discerning the purposes and processes behind the hive’s activity is entirely another story.” He shakes his heads and sneers. “Enough with the metaphor. Killing people, or even manipulating them to kill each other, is far too easy. Achieving any goal is too easy when one operates outside of the rules. Real challenges involve limits, taboos, and rules. Laws. I could easily become the next Moriarty if I so chose-- create my own cases to solve, hire someone to make one for me-- but it would be dull, John, unconscionably dull. All that time and effort spent on what essentially amounts to an overcomplicated wank!”

John is too busy giggling like an idiot to bother with being a bit worried by Sherlock’s reasons for not pursuing crime. “And here I thought you found laws annoying and pointless,” he manages to get out in between giggles. “Overcomplicated wank! He’d have shot you for that on the spot.”

Sherlock sniffs. “Laws are irritating but necessary. You see, John, most people are too stupid to be allowed to think they have any sort of autonomy. As for myself, laws provide a challenge; if I must break or bend one, it may only be bent or broken if it directly assists in providing a solution to a case that I could not solve otherwise. I admit that I have been forced to break far too many over the past three years, but some goals must be achieved at all costs.”

John thinks of the cabbie and nods; laws come second when protecting someone for just reasons. He thinks of Mrs Hudson and Lestrade and the last three years, weighs his sadness against Sherlock’s lonely crusade and the motivations behind it. He thinks about deceptions—Sherlock’s faked death, Mycroft’s silence about it. He thinks about Mycroft’s bizarre, fang-filled smile and what it might mean for the detective, a man so bound in science that his keenly observant mind completely failed to put together the tells that marked John as something not quite human. 

For the time being, John sets all those thoughts and questions aside and leans into Sherlock heavily, curling his wing around the detective’s shoulders. There would be plenty of time tomorrow to wade through ethics and to interrogate Mycroft. For now, there was Sherlock and John. “I’m right pissed that you left me in the dark like that, Sherlock," John says softly, "and if you do it again, I swear to God I’ll leave and never come back, but... thank you. Thank you for doing that for us. For me.” He smiles when the detective’s head tilts to rest against John’s. “I’m glad you’re home. Now, carry on with the tale. Tell me everything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Josh and Mitch, my darling beta-readers.
> 
> If anything in the dialogue is egregiously American, please tell me!


	3. how doth the little crocodile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft keeps many secrets. The political ones aren't even close to being the biggest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are elements of dubious consent to the backstories of certain characters in this part of the tale. If that's something that spooks you, please read with caution.
> 
> Mycroft's memories are featured in this one. They're the italicised parts.

_“Sherlock is not like you, Mycroft.”_

_Mummy does not mean poorly by what she says; rather, she is stating fact. Mycroft responds appropriately. “Why is he different?”_

_Mummy runs her hand through Mycroft’s thick auburn hair; she smiles and brushes her thumb over the freckles spotting the bridge of his nose. “He is phouka; you are nicor.”_

_Mycroft thinks about this for a moment. “And you are what?”_

_“Promised from birth.” When Mycroft’s typically placid expression briefly twitches into something resembling distress, Mummy gathers him into her lap. They both peer into the cradle where a tiny, raven-haired infant sleeps. “I have been given you and your brother; my circumstances are not happy, but you two are blessings from a curse. You are my miracles, my everything.”_

_As he mulls that over, Mycroft wonders what he might have as his everything. The baby stirs and whimpers, and his thoughts turn to protection. If he had an everything, whatever it was, he’d do everything in his power to protect and keep it._

_Gazing down at tiny Sherlock, Mycroft decides that he will be the first everything. Mummy has obviously updated hers to include Sherlock; if an everything can be added to, it won’t hurt to start one right away. He promptly adds Mummy to his everything. Mummy and Sherlock, his first and most important everything._

_His everything thus far, at any rate._

***

Sherlock awakens somewhere around noon the morning after relating his travels over the last three years to John. He shuffles into the kitchen, expecting to find John making tea, only to find that John is not in the kitchen. He pads upstairs—John is not in his room. He goes back downstairs, checks in the ceiling space, checks in the loo—no John.

He looks outside. 

Mycroft is standing on the front walk, talking with John.

John and Mycroft both start when the front door bursts open to emit a very angry Sherlock. “Mycroft! What are you doing here?! Haven’t you got a war to start? Go away!” The detective stomps right out to his brother and is fully prepared to shove him away, but John is suddenly in his space and chivvying him back toward the door, never once turning his back on Mycroft.

Mycroft watches it all with his typically infuriating, beatific smile. “Goodness, John, you act as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

John’s body shudders and twists; Sherlock’s jaw drops as tawny-dust fur ripples over his skin and wings blossom from his back like strange, golden-brown petals. Barely thirty seconds after it started, John stands between Mycroft and Sherlock in his natural form. “You need to leave, Mycroft.”

Sherlock can barely contain his complete and utter amazement at John’s shapechanging, but Mycroft seems singularly unmoved. He sighs, shakes his head, and tuts; reaching into his jacket, he withdraws a round glass bauble from his pocket. It’s barely the size of a large marble, and seems to be full of a salmon-coloured liquid. “I’m honestly impressed, Sherlock. I expected your reaction to John’s true nature to be much more... negative.” 

“There is undoubtedly an explanation for it; just because a thing is unknown, does not mean it is impossible.” Sherlock seems incapable of tearing his eyes away from John. “Mycroft, you... just leave, now. Go away, I want to talk to John without your meddling.”

A small, carved wooden box is withdrawn from the same pocket the bauble presumably came from. Mycroft places the little trinket into the box and shuts it with a click. “John. This is now yours. Mind Sherlock; he will need you while transitioning back to Baker Street.” 

As soon as John’s taken the tiny box between his teeth, Mycroft turns and departs without further comment.

***

_As Sherlock grows and comes into his own intellectually, it becomes apparent that his fae nature must never come to light. Such a contradiction of the laws and theories of science would upset the already delicate balance of his emotional and mental development._

_Mycroft refuses to allow something under his protection suffer any sort of damage or distress, so he takes it upon himself to find a solution for the rapidly approaching maturation of Sherlock’s nonhuman traits._

_His search eventually leads him to Lyminster, where he’s quietly stuffed into a pair of tall rubber boots and shuffled through a gap in a tall hedgerow. He finds himself standing before a wide, calm pool of water, deep and dark and strangely quiet despite the sunny weather and verdant, tree-lined surrounds._

_As Mycroft’s gaze sweeps across the pool and its shore, something large, serpentine, and wriggly that glitters like wet, thin, pebbly rubber sort of slip-flop-slides from the boughs of a nearby tree. Grasses and heather blossoms rustle and part; a low, sibilant hiss joins the whisper of the breeze. “And who might you be?” The hiss becomes a whoosh, like some sort of large animal taking a deep, deep inhale; it goes on far longer than expected. “Aha. I would ask who you are, but I know the answer to that. I would ask what you are, but I know that too.”_

_A wedge-shaped head rises above the vegetation on a thick, sinewy neck. Lizardlike blue-black eyes are set wide above a reptilian maw full of shark’s teeth; slit-like nostrils flare open as the creature inhales again. It’s covered in snakelike scales the same uncomfortably wet, dusky pink as the soft underside of a human tongue. Mycroft can only stare, caught somewhere between his usual herpetophobia and a strange, morbid fascination. “I’m afraid... you have me at a disadvantage, then...” he stammers, all of his carefully-constructed calm falling away in the face of something so blatantly not natural._

_The creature’s mouth opens to let out a basso laugh, displaying the frightening shark’s teeth set in a blood red interior. “Were you anyone else, child, I would not hesitate to make a meal of you.” It laughs again as Mycroft goes sheet-white. “I do not, however, partake of my own kind, boy, particularly not my own spawn.”_

_The creature emerges fully from the vegetation. Its whole body is that same glistening pink; it resembles nothing so much as the top half of a truly massive snake stitched to the body of an alligator, with overlarge bat wings glued just behind its front legs and the rest of the snake sewn on as a tail. Awkward though the proportions seem, the creature’s body speaks of latent, devastating strength and quickness. “Now, child, tell me why you have come.”_

_Mycroft is still coming to terms with the ‘my own spawn’ part. “Sp... spawn?”_

_“Yes, spawn.” Dusky pink shudders and rolls, tightening, knotting, and fading until the beast has somehow folded itself into the shape of a red-haired man wearing a truly lurid pink three-piece suit. “Your mother’s first-born and second-born were promised to me by her mother in exchange for a lover’s draught to beguile an elf. We fae are not so restricted by mere species or shape barriers when it comes to procreation, after all.”_

_Mycroft gapes, remembers Sherlock, and forces himself to just set aside all of his questions regarding this creature that claims to be his sire. “I am not here to discuss my parentage. This is about my brother, beast, and I am told you have an extensive library.”_

_Ruddy lips part to reveal sharp white teeth. “Oh, so Gwydderig did make use of that, after all,” the beast purrs. “Tell me about the phouka’s child. Is he vicious? Capricious? Do disaster and havoc play in his wake?”_

_Mycroft snarls. Sherlock is a troublemaker, but he is anything but malicious, and hearing such things even implied about his little brother grates on Mycroft’s nerves. “He is isolated and self-hating, never understanding why he is so different from everyone around him. He resorts to science and logic to explain the world. If Gooth... Guitherig wants his child to survive to adulthood without self-destructing—if you want to fulfil the bargain you obviously made with him—you will give me a way to keep his other nature from maturing and manifesting until he is able to cope with it.”_

_The beast’s smile only grows. “Oh, certainly, boy... but I’ll need a favour from you, of course. Tis only fair. You may call me Ddraig for the purposes of our... transaction...”_

***

Sherlock installs himself on John’s couch with a huff, curling up on himself and muttering about how he is emphatically not in need of babysitting, much less rehabilitation. 

John, knowing Sherlock will be unresponsive for the duration of his post-Mycroft sulk, deposits the little wooden box on the kitchen table for a closer examination. It’s about the size of a ring box, but instead of velvet, it’s made of what looks and smells like ash wood. Carvings as intricate as filigree cover the entire box; tangled amongst complicated Celtic knots, there’s a motif of snakes eating their own tails. When John opens the little box with one claw, he’s surprised to discover that the carvings cover the entire interior of the box, too. 

The bauble itself is nested in a crushed wad of spring green silk. It’s a tiny, spherical flask about the size of a large bumble bee; there’s an equally-tiny cork pressed and waxed into the neck. Despite the fact that the cork is barely larger than a peppercorn, its surface is covered in miniscule ink drawings of the same tail-eating snake. The liquid in the bauble is coral pink, but there are onyx swirls of glimmering, opalescent something suspended in it. The swirls don’t move when John nudges the box.

Whatever it is, John’s not about to break it. God only knows what Mycroft might do if it broke. John shuts the little box and pushes it to the middle of the table with one paw, figuring he’ll give it a closer look after he’s had lunch. 

Sherlock wanders in as soon as sounds of cooking start; John studiously ignores the staring whilst he very competently goes about preparing a venison steak without the help of opposeable thumbs.

***

_The spell (because there’s really no better descriptor for it, having watched its creation) is surprisingly... unimpressive._

_Mycroft holds the tiny, spherical flask up, swirling the contents. A clear substance the colour of a blush wine swirls with diaphanous blackish streaks and opalescent clouds of miniscule points of light. “This is not what I was expecting.”_

_“Magic rarely is,” says Thraig. “The glass keeps the spell cohesive. Break it, and the spell is broken.”_

_The gaze Mycroft gives his beastly mentor is evaluative, calculating. “Such a container was not needed for your end of the bargain. You will give me a case, at least, to make our arrangement somewhat balanced.”_

_Thraig smirks. He produces a small wooden box, inlaid with silk and closed by a tiny latch. “Good that you have enough wits about you to demand that. Do not forget our bargain, my dear little worm. You will return in twenty years to fulfill your half.”_

_Mycroft nods, turns on his heel, and leaves the clearing and its deep, dark pool. The price is well worth ensuring Sherlock’s continued health, and he’s learned more about his own nature than Mummy had ever imparted before her death._

_Having seen what he will eventually grow to be, Mycroft thinks he could do much better than some soggy, overgrown pond. Much, much better._

***

Sherlock flinches back as John cracks the lid from an older tanning bucket. “Good grief, John! What is that stink!?” he gasps, one hand cinching his nostrils shut and the other waving as if to ward off the scent. John chuckles as he dunks heavily-gloved hands into the bucket to haul out the softened hide. He spreads it over the tanning bench with a wet flop, grabs his scraping knife, and sets to work. 

Predictably, Sherlock ceases his whining as soon as he sees what John is doing. The next hour is brim-full of questions, questions, questions—processes, methods, tools, uses, the reasons John picked up the hobby, and practically everything else to do with tanning and John’s introduction to the craft are asked after, examined, cross-examined, and picked apart. 

By the time the hide is ready to be strung up for drying and oiling, Sherlock has commandeered a pair of extra gloves, an awl, and a handful of the laces for the drying frame; he carefully punches holes and threads the laces through as John supervises. “This is what you’ve been doing for the last three years?”

John shrugs. “Some of it. Mostly I’ve just... been out.” He guides Sherlock in hanging and tightening the hide in the drying frame. When everything that can be done is done, he unlaces his apron and shifts back to his natural shape (Sherlock openly stares during the process). “There were times when I’d go days or weeks without going back to the house, usually during the summer.”

Sherlock follows John outside. “That seems extreme.” John can feel the detective’s intense, analysing gaze on him as he stretches and rolls his legs, shoulders, and wings. “Your wings are very large, considering your body proportions. Are you capable of flight?”

“Yep,” John replies with a smile. “It’s one of the greatest things in the world, flying. When I’m not hunting, I’m probably up for a glide.” His wings flex open and closed, as if in anticipation of imminent takeoff. “Sherlock, you have to understand. I... didn’t have much left as a human. I have books, I have the laptop, I have a few games, models, puzzles, cooking, leatherworking... beyond that, what’s keeping me in my human shape? What’s keeping me indoors?”

Sherlock thinks about that. “Nothing, I suppose.”

“Precisely.”

John is surprised when Sherlock simply turns and leaves. He considers what was just said, tries thinking about it from Sherlock’s perspective, and curses. He runs after the detective—they’re not done talking yet, not by a long shot.

***

_Twenty-one years later, Mycroft lies curled before the fireplace in his home office, pondering his options._

_Maturing had not been enjoyable. Learning to change shapes had been less so, particularly because of the... changes that Thraig’s bargain had wrought. He’d had twenty years to become accustomed to (and even learn to enjoy) everything—the scales, the teeth, the coiled-steel musculature, and the body as sinewy and lightning-quick as a striking snake—but on the twentieth anniversary of the bargain being struck, Mycroft had come perilously close to questioning whether the exchange had been worth it._

_Granted, he’d had his suspicions about dragons in Parliament most soundly confirmed, and it wasn’t like Gregory or the Lestrade patriarch had been any happier with the results of Thraig’s machinations, but... it was wrong for Thraig to have forced such a thing._

_Were it not for the bargain’s terms and product keeping Mycroft and Gregory from taking direct action against Thraig, the foul, tongue-coloured bastard would have died a thousand deaths over the past year._

_All too aware of looming deadlines, Mycroft knows he’s going to have to make a decision. He can’t let Thraig follow through with whatever it is he has planned—a year ago, Mycroft might have let him, but now that he and Gregory have endured and worried and waited so much... now that he’s caught wind of what Thraig is planning... now that he actually cares... well, it just can’t be allowed to happen._

_The only people he trusts enough to have the combined talent and know-how to take Thraig on without succumbing to temptation or indiscretion, though, are his little brother and the army doctor._

_That fact terrifies him more than anything ever has._

***

“If that wasn’t what you meant, John, then why, pray tell, would you say it?” 

John’s exasperated sigh has a sizeable growl somewhere in its recent ancestry. “Listen, Sherlock. I’m not a genius. Considerably above average, but not a genius. Not like you. I... don’t always say things right the first time.” He paces nervously, trying to think of a way to say what he needs to without sounding completely ridiculous. He’s never been good at (read: rarely even bothered with) self-expression outside of frustration or telling about Sherlock’s and his escapades. “When... when you died—I know you’re not dead, I didn’t know it then, shut up—I tried to keep going. I got fired for something I didn’t do—they just wanted me gone because I was associated with you. The press wouldn’t stop stalking me. The flat smelled like you and looked like you and memories were everywhere. Even when Scotland Yard released the evidence proving that Moriarty was real, the press didn’t let up. The Chief Superintendent’s suit against me went through before it was found that he was accepting bribes from gangs known to be associated with Moriarty’s network. I was broke, jobless, and plagued by night terrors. When Mycroft offered the cottage, I bolted.

“I got out here, unpacked, and spent about a month trying to be normal. By the fourth time I was chased to the village limits by gossipmongers and journalists, I looked at everything to do with humans and just thought to myself, ‘fuck it’. Went back to the house, put away the groceries, walked out, stripped, shifted, and didn’t come back for a month.”

Sherlock looks understanding and guilty for a split second; he shutters the expression so quickly that John would have missed it had he not been looking. “Some part of me feels responsible for your misery; I am sorry to have... left you in such a lurch.” The detective looks uncomfortable with the aftertaste of an apology. “Another part of me envies you.”

“Envy?” John echoes. The apology was surprising enough; hearing that Sherlock _envies_ him is almost surreal. “What could you possibly envy me for?”

Sherlock whirls, a gust of wind lifting his ever-present Belstaff into a dramatic, wide flare. He flings his hands out as if to gesture at all of John; the shadows cast by the canopy overhead dance over his face wildly, making his glasz eyes seem almost feral. “You! You aren’t one of them! You... you’re free of humanity, you’re above it, you can leave it behind!” His hands fly to his head and tangle in his hair. “As a child, I could not imagine or tolerate fantasy—such things were beyond the laws of science and nature—but I wanted desperately to have some... escape. I wanted to have some incontrovertible reason why I was different. I wanted to be acceptable to the others in my class. I didn’t want to be... whatever I was. Different, retarded, sociopathic; the labels changed but the onus remained ever the same. Isolation. I tried to drown that part of me that longed to fit; surely I could choke out whatever it was that made me human and separate myself of my own will, rather than being forced out.”

John sidles closer to Sherlock and slowly, gently leans against his shins. It sounds like Sherlock engaged in a bit of cutting off his own nose to spite his face when he was younger, but that’s too far in the past to be worth commenting on. “And now?”

“Now I am dead to everyone but you, Mycroft, Lestrade, and Molly. I am reviled and worshipped. I am something, but I do not know what.” He sinks to his knees, lets John tuck himself against his side. “Now that I have succeeded in setting myself apart... I don’t know that I like all that it entails.” He closes his eyes tight. “Would that I could be like you.”

John wraps Sherlock in one wing and thinks about Mycroft’s secret, whatever it is. There will have to be another talk, he decides—some intuition tells him that whatever comes of it, it can only help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://zundaerazylym.tumblr.com/image/44603705142 Ddraig is a creeper.
> 
>  
> 
> Mycroft's Welsh isn't stellar in this story, so whenever he refers to Ddraig or Gwydderig, he'll use Anglicised forms of the names. Ddraig becomes Thraig (in which the 'ai' sounds like 'aye'), and Gwydderig becomes Guitherig (pronounced gwith-ER-ig).


	4. improve his shining tail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which more questions are raised than answered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. So... it's been what, too long since I last updated this? Classes have been a right terror these past three weeks.
> 
> Enjoy! We're getting into the plotty part now!

Sherlock sweeps into the cottage with his customary flair, barely taking the time to peel away and hang up his greatcoat before prowling into the kitchen. John watches as the detective raids the refrigerator, simultaneously worried and amused. “I can make you lunch,” he offers, only to receive an impatiently-flapped hand from around the refrigerator door. “If you’re all right, then, I’m going to go for a glide. Don’t explode the house.” Hand-flapping again—John shrugs. 

Trotting up the steps to his bedroom, John fetches his mobile phone from the bedside table. After making sure it has enough battery for a moderately long conversation, he clutches it between his teeth and launches himself from the bedroom window. 

As he’d told Sherlock, John’s only out for a glide—if he’s going to call Mycroft, he can’t very well be up in the air, where the wind will drown out everything. He flies roughly southwest until he comes to an old, stately oak that stands tall over the surrounding smaller trees. The boughs are sturdy and more than strong enough to handle John’s weight, even toward the very top of the tree; John had used it three years ago while relearning the tricky parts of landings and takeoffs. John backwings to a landing in one of the upper branches, tucking himself into the crook of two limbs before carefully shifting back to his human shape. 

The mobile (covered in scratches and dings from being carried between sharp teeth so much) still has service, even all the way out in the heart of the Downs, so John finds Mycroft’s number in the contacts and places the call. 

“John. So good to hear from you.” 

John rolls his eyes. The only times he’s called Mycroft with the mobile, it’s been to shout at him while drunk or to request the cleanup crew be sent to collect Moran’s corpse and to get the bloodstains out of his hardwood floors. “I’m sure, Mycroft. I reckon you know why I’m calling?” 

There’s a sigh on the other end of the line. “I do. Is Sherlock anywhere nearby?” 

“I wouldn’t have called if he was, Mycroft. If it matters, I’m up a tree. Now, care to explain what’s going on? Those weren’t human teeth you flashed back at the cottage.” John pauses, settles himself more comfortably on the branch. “Sherlock... he was upset, earlier. Said he envied me for not being human. Does he know about you?” 

"No.” 

The answer is short, clipped. John can’t help but roll his eyes again. “Right. What about Sherlock? If you two didn’t have the same parents, he’d waste no time telling me all about it so he could mock you—either he’s unaware of something or you’re full-blooded brothers, in which case he’s just as nonhuman as you are. Speaking of which, what are you, anyway?” 

"Something the older locals in your area would no doubt love to tell you stories about,” Mycroft replies with a laugh that’s anything but lighthearted. “I am what is commonly known as a ‘Knucker’. Have you heard of them?” 

John has, in fact, heard of them. “You mean the dragon that supposedly lived in that old pond in Lyminster? I thought there was just the one of him.” According to the folktale that the innkeeper in Blackmoor Village had regaled John with about a week after moving to the cottage, the Knucker was a sly, wriggly old dragon that lived in the large, spring-fed pond in Lyminster. The creature terrorized the village for years before a local farm boy, Jim Puttock, killed the beast by cooking up an enormous, poisoned pie. The boy died of his own poison before he could claim the reward offered by the mayor of the village, so they buried him and carved an ornate gravestone for him, which could still be seen in the Lyminster church. 

Mycroft gives a disdainful sniff. “There are fifty or so of the species that I know of, but Thraig of Lyminster is singular, fortunately,” he growls. John cringes at the mangled Welsh. “Were there more than one of him, I would take it upon myself to rid the world of them both. He is my sire, much to my dismay.” 

“Oh,” John says, not sure how to respond to that. “So... you’re a dragon, then?” 

“A member of the Occidodraco genus, yes, though more closely related to Loch serpents than terrestrial dragons.” There’s a rustling of papers and a soft, female voice in the background of Mycroft’s end of the line. John’s not sure, but he thinks he hears ‘Korea’, ‘armistice’, and ‘state of war’ mentioned in the same sentence. “John, we will continue this conversation at a later point. There has been an emergency; I must attend to its resolution. Do not speak a word of this to my younger brother, or I shall be very cross indeed.” 

The phone cuts out before John can respond. 

“Christ,” John mutters, shaking his head. He’s not sure if he’s quite ready to think about what it means that a dragon occupies a ‘minor’ Government post. Granted, being an ex-military doctor sphinx, he might be a bit hypocritical to be freaked out by dragons in the Government, but... bloody _dragons_. 

And what of Sherlock? Where does he fit in, John wonders, and why would Mycroft keep him ignorant? 

Gripping the phone in his teeth again, John stands and changes shape, dropping from his perch as soon as his wings are developed enough to slow his fall. Sweeping up and out of the old oak’s boughs, John powers into his first downbeat and points himself home. 

*** 

As soon as Sherlock hears the first, muffled clap of John departing on his ‘glide’, he shuts the refrigerator with a snap and spins on his heel to face the kitchen table. 

Interesting and well-constructed though John’s model of some sort of old-fashioned ship may be, Sherlock has eyes only for the tiny, intricately-carved wooden box that his ever-scheming, ever-meddling lump of a brother had left in John’s care. Plucking it from the table with nimble fingers, he turns it and turns it, scrutinizing the Ouroboros and infinity knot motif. There’s something... something about it... 

“Quasicrystals,” he breathes reverently as he realises that the pattern, while seemingly very regular, _never once repeats itself_. Excited, he flips the box open, pulling out the silk fill and a little glass bauble. Sure enough, the entire box is covered—where a repeating pattern would have neatly folded back into itself, the artisan that had carved the box had very cleverly used the lips of the halves to disguise the disjoint. 

And what an artisan it must have been, Sherlock thinks as he examines the carvings more closely. The box looks like simple bas-relief carving at first glance, but on closer inspection, he sees that there appear to be three tightly-interlocking, interwoven layers to it. He looks again, because that doesn’t seem quite right, and his jaw drops—it’s all one continuous, unbroken piece of wood, a wildly intricate Gordian knot. The tool marks are obviously those of an actual artisan as opposed to a three-dimensional printer, but all three layers, impossibly tight interweavings and all, have been hand-carved. Unless the creator was possessed of dexterity rivaling an electron-scanning microscope and armed with a monofilament blade, there’s just no way that such a thing should be humanly possible. 

Sherlock goes to send a text to John and stops mid-keystroke. John is not human. Non-humans are possible; therefore, non-human artisans are a possibility. It’s possible but very improbable that John’s species is the only ‘paranormal’ species, so there must be others... others who could be hiding in plain sight, just like John. Others who present perfectly normal human data on the surface, yet shatter the rules of biological science in their natural forms. 

“Oh dear God,” Sherlock murmurs as he contemplates that. He’s only ever catalogued and quantified human data. Now that John and his natural form are proven to be possible... now that he’s holding a handcrafted Gordian quasicrystal... what else could be out there? 

The change in his frame of reference is so massive that Sherlock almost feels it as a physical blow. 

It’s a paradigm shift of unprecedented immensity, as if the very foundational laws of the universe have changed, or perhaps as if Sherlock has somehow become privy to a fourth dimension and realised that the neat, cubic rooms of his Mind Palace are but faces on larger, stranger shapes. 

Sherlock’s not so sure how he feels about his mental landscape spontaneously blossoming into a forest of cubic prisms; there’s just too much room for terrible, strange, impossible things. He’s never backed down in the face of too much possibility before, though, so he grits his teeth and begins the process of adjusting to the new mental terrain. If John can live with such an understanding of the world, then Sherlock should be more than capable of adapting. 

It’s still a good twenty minutes before Sherlock is sure enough of the new order of things in his mind palace to start cataloguing the data presented by the little box. He’s got nowhere to really start with regards to abductive, inductive, or even deductive reasoning beyond the fact that the box is very likely of non-human artifice and that it came to John from Mycroft. Rather than telling him more about the box, though, those facts merely raise questions about how and why Mycroft came into possession of such a fantastical thing. 

Sherlock resolves to examine the contents of the box for more clues. He sets the little box aside gently (it’s too mathematically beautiful to risk damaging) and takes up the silk and bauble for inspection. 

There’s nothing terribly special about the scrap of spring-green silk beyond its very fine, very dense weave; dismissing it, Sherlock lifts the tiny glass flask and tilts it about. The body of the flask is spherical and about the size of a large bumblebee; slight variations in the way light is refracted by the glass indicate that it is hand-blown and very, very thin, possibly less than a millimeter thick. A cork roughly the size of a peppercorn stoppers the neck of the flask, and a cap of creamy golden wax seals the top, almost like the wax seals on Mummy’s favourite wines. A tiny Ouroboros has been stamped into the top of the wax, and the cork has fine, hand-inked infinity knots covering every square millimeter of its surface. 

The liquid in the tiny flask is decidedly strange. It’s the colour and viscosity of a blush wine, but there are cloudy skeins and whorls of something purplish-black lacing the liquid. When Sherlock gives the bauble a shake, the liquid splashes about but the swirls remain utterly stationary, behaving as if fixed to the bauble instead of suspended in the liquid. They’re not visible without the liquid around them. Angling the bauble back and forth in the sunlight from the kitchen window, the light glints off of the dark whirls in iridescent cobalt and emerald. 

Sherlock is absolutely _burning_ with curiosity now. He whirls and pulls open several drawers and cabinets before finally locating a small Swiss Army knife; flipping open the blade, he uses it to gently scrape away the wax from the neck and mouth of the bottle. Once he has the cork exposed, he sets the bauble down and runs up the steps to raid John’s bedroom. Not long thereafter, he returns bearing a safety pin and his old pocket magnifier (if his eyes had gotten watery when he’d discovered it tucked into a bedside drawer, well, he chalked it up to dust). 

As soon as the cork comes free with a tiny _pop!_ after Sherlock skewers it on the safety pin’s point, the liquid in the bauble changes colour from blush pink to a pale champagne. A surprisingly strong scent, like heather honey undershot by something a bit astringent and bitter, fills the air. “Curious,” he murmurs. What would cause such a change? Exposure to oxygen or nitrogen, perhaps? 

“What are you doing?” 

Sherlock very nearly jumps out of his skin and _does_ jump right out of his chair; the bauble goes flying and hits John’s model ship, landing upended on the poop deck. The honey-bitter scent becomes positively cloying as the little glass flask empties. 

John is standing in the kitchen doorway in his eagle-cat-John shape. He looks like he can’t decide if he’s apologetic, furious, worried, or amused. In the interests of avoiding the ‘furious’ bit, Sherlock decides to keep his disappointment over the contamination of the liquid to himself. He plays up his surprise instead and gives John a wide-eyed gaze. 

Amusement and apology win out on John’s face. “Gave you a fright, didn’t I?” he chuckles, bumping Sherlock with the wrist of one folded wing. He examines his drenched model but doesn’t touch it. “Should be all right. The glue’s waterproof once it’s dry. Jesus, does that smell enough? What the hell was in that little thing, anyway?” 

Sherlock gets to his feet and returns to his chair. “I was hoping you could tell me. Did Mycroft not tell you what it was?” 

John shrugs. “You were there. He took the little bottle out, took the box out, put the bottle in the box, shut it, and gave it to me.” He sniffs at the liquid on the ship and grimaces. “Makes my nose tingle like I might sneeze,” he remarks. Flight feathers rattle and clatter as he flicks his wings and resettles them over his back. Sherlock can’t help staring at the glossy brown-black feathers. 

“What is it like, John?” 

“Hm?” John asks, glancing back over one shoulder as he stands on his hind legs to open a cabinet and retrieve a roll of paper towels. He stands nearly half again as tall as his human form like that, Sherlock notes. 

“Flying,” Sherlock responds, dropping his chin into one hand. “Under your own power, that is. I’ve been on far too many aeroplanes.” 

John uses his mouth to tear a sheet from the roll and passes it to Sherlock. “Humour me,” he says when Sherlock pouts. “I’ll tell you about flying, you clean up your mess without destroying my ship. You don’t want to see me trying to do fine movements with these paws. You don’t think Mycroft will be angry about the spill?” 

Sherlock rolls his eyes but takes the towel and proceeds to clean up the mess anyway. “Whatever reasons he had for giving it to you, he knew that I would be present in the house and curious about his... little knick-knack. Tell me about flying.” He plucks the bauble from the deck of the model ship and looks it over. “Edit: wait one minute and then tell me. Do you have cotton buds?” 

One raid of the cabinetry in the tiny downstairs loo later, Sherlock comes to a sudden halt in the kitchen doorway. John is curled atop the kitchen table beneath the window, golden ochre fur and dark cacao flight feathers resplendently gilt by the autumn sunlight that’s beginning to encroach upon the table. He reclines with enough poise for a king, half-lidded eyes surveying the kitchen and Sherlock with the lazy, contented hauteur typically reserved for use by spoilt housecats and Mycroft after a slice of death-by-chocolate cake. 

For a brief, wistful, belatedly mortifying moment, Sherlock wants nothing more than to tuck himself under one of those vast wings and soak up the warmth. 

John lets out a rumbling chuckle that’s definitely more than half purr. “Don’t look so shocked. It’s my afternoon spot. You’re the one who never differentiated between ‘furniture’ and ‘floor’, after all.” 

Sherlock lets John think that the staring was because of his unorthodox table use. Better that than the truth. “Whatever you say, John.” Spreading a few paper towels over the unoccupied half of the table, Sherlock perches in his chair and peers into the bauble. There’s still a tiny bit of the liquid left, enough that he might be able to fish out a decent sample with one of the cotton buds. “I can multitask. Tell me about flight.” 

John takes one look at the bauble and the cotton bud in Sherlock’s hands and shakes his head. “Nope. Bad enough that we spilled it; don’t you go breaking it now, too. Put it away and play with it later, once we know what Mycroft wants us to do with it.” 

There’s some scowling and sulking, but Sherlock obeys, setting the bauble back onto the deck of John’s model ship. “There,” he says, sitting back in his chair with a huff. His stomach chooses that moment to growl; there’s a moment of silence before John bursts into high-pitched giggles. Hearing that laugh again after such a long, long time is such a _relief_ that Sherlock can’t help but join in. 

“You great, gangly idiot,” John sighs, getting to his feet and hopping down to the floor. “You didn’t eat a thing while I was gone, did you? Some things never change, I suppose.” He bites down on the refrigerator handle—Sherlock suddenly understands where the gouges and dents in the plastic handle have come from—and tugs it open. He spends a moment looking through drawers and shelves before sighing. “Well. I can survive on this, but you need greens and fruits. Up for an excursion into town?” 

Sherlock gets to his feet and stretches. “Only if you tell me about flight on the way, and don’t make it boring.” 

*** 

Greatham is small and quiet. It’s about two or three kilometres south-southwest of John’s cottage, much closer than Bordon or Liphook, and sits along Petersfield Road like beads on a string. 

John can tell that Sherlock doesn’t think much of it, and his amusement at the detective’s discomfort is about all that keeps John distracted from how miserably irritating it is to be wearing clothing. 

“It’s so... quaint,” Sherlock sighs as they make their way to the village shop. “Places like this always alarm me.” 

“What?” John demands, pausing in the door to the shop to give his friend an incredulous look. “Listen, I know you think peace and quiet is hateful, but places like this are anything but alarming.” 

A raised eyebrow and a tipped chin eloquently convey Sherlock’s amusement. “If you take a moment to examine the statistics, John, London’s dankest alleyways are no more prone to crime than this peaceful, quiet little village.” 

John scoffs as he gathers up a basket and sets off in search of produce. “That’s all well and good, but alarm? Really?” 

“Absolutely. In a city, people are packed in atop one another. Drunken shouts, the screams of a child or a woman, struggles, gunshots—they are all within earshot, and but a single complaint can set the machinery of justice into motion.” Sherlock plucks three tins of mandarin oranges from the shelves and drops them into John’s basket. “Out here in the country—perhaps not here, in the heart of this village, but entirely too nearby!—the houses are distant, separated by fields and copses and moors. With such distance, who is there to hear the screams, the shouts, the cries for help? One might commit a murder and bury the body, and no one would be any wiser until a grave was overturned or an absence was noted.” Carrots and courgette join the mandarin oranges. 

“That... makes sense.” John resolutely does not think of Moran, adds milk to the basket, and turns, walking backwards so he can watch Sherlock. The detective seems bored, but John can see his eyes darting here, there, everywhere, cataloguing items and people and God only knows what else. “Surely there are interesting things to find in the old manor houses around here,” he suggests. “Hidden war treasures, secret societies, ciphered messages between feuding siblings and families, all that—couldn’t those be interesting?” 

Sherlock shrugs. “Perhaps.” 

John chuckles. “I remember hearing stories from some of my army mates about the stuff their great-granddas brought back from Afghanistan. Supposedly Murray’s great-grandda brought his great-grandmum a lapis and gold necklace that weighed nearly six hundred grams. Who the hell wears a six hundred gram neck—” 

Sherlock stands there and holds back laughter as John walks backwards, right into a petite, fit blonde woman in a pencil skirt, a blazer, and sensible shoes. They stumble and yelp and grab each other in an effort to stay upright. The surprised curses and gasps of ‘oh my god!’ and ‘sorry, sorry!’ quickly devolve into giggles as the two find their footing again. 

The woman is small—somewhere between five to seven centimetres shorter than John—and striking, with golden hair, green eyes, and a wry smile. Sherlock’s laughter, already restrained, suddenly lodges unpleasantly in his chest when he sees the slightly-detached good humour in the woman’s eyes flare into sharper, keener interest. John must see it, too, because he goes still and quiet, as if surprised. 

After five insufferably long seconds of the two of them standing there, staring, Sherlock’s patience runs out. “Are you done ogling one another?” 

The woman, seemingly unflappable, glances at him and rolls her eyes. “Forgive me for being a bit surprised by running into another sphinx at the bloody grocery,” she drawls up at Sherlock, her mouth crooking into a cheeky, lopsided little grin as shock effectively silences him. Turning back to John, she pats his shoulders and takes a step back (if Sherlock lets out a sigh of relief and steps in closer to John when she does, none of them mention it). “Are you from around here?” 

Sherlock very nearly chokes on his disgust at the unoriginal line, but John just laughs. “For three years, yes. You?” 

A surprisingly complex cascade of emotions flickers over the woman’s face in swift succession. “I... just moved out here last month.” 

John and Sherlock glance at each other—apparently, they both picked up on that not-quite-typical reaction. John purses his lips and tips his chin down in thought, then looks up again just as quickly, decision made. “Let’s... go to the Inn, then. For lunch. You can tell us your story, and we’ll share ours.” He belatedly offers a hand. “John Watson.” 

“Doctor John Watson, formerly Captain,” Sherlock adds in. “I’m Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective. John is my blogger.” 

The woman arches one shapely eyebrow, nonplussed. “Well. You’re not territorial at all, are you?” She takes John’s hand and shakes it once, firmly. “Mary Morstan. So, Doctor Watson. Got an interesting tale to tell?” 

Sherlock rolls his eyes again, but the potential for something interesting—a sphinx woman on the run from something? Someone?—is just too good to turn down. “No more interesting than yours is, I don’t doubt,” he remarks. Risks of yet another little girlfriend for John will have to be taken. It's been too long since they've been on a case. Far, far too long.


	5. and pour the waters of the Nile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is one of those Chapters I'll Never Be Entirely Happy With.
> 
> Lightly beta-read; things have been very busy what with finals, projects, internships, meetings, recovering from nasty colds and conjunctivitis, allergies, hammering out futures, and all that sort of real-world claptrap. I'm so sorry it took so long to finish-- between beating this chapter about trying to make it acceptable and trying to find a beta reader (thank you J.J.!), timeliness gave it up as a bad job a few weeks ago.
> 
> Now that it's summer, however, I'll (hopefully) have more time to write. Again, if you spot blatant Americanisms, please let me know!

            The little restaurant at the Greatham Inn is quiet when the three arrive; they find a corner table quickly and place their orders. Having done that, however, an awkward silence descends over the table.

            Well, awkward for John. Sherlock is staring at Mary over steepled fingers, and Mary is meeting his gaze joule for joule. John’s caught between monitoring Sherlock for potential inappropriate rambles and wondering at Mary. He’s never met another sphinx, so to find one in a tiny Hampshire village... well, it’s unexpected, and he’s desperately curious (not to mention a bit interested—she’s quite attractive).

            “You’re a military brat,” Sherlock finally rumbles. John goes to protest, but a glance at Mary stops him—she’s smiling again.

            “That I am. Sussed that out, then, did you?” she queries. It’s playful, but there’s an undertone of steel to her tone and a slightly tense line to the way she’s sitting.

            Sherlock shrugs. “Your straight posture with uplifted chin is much like John’s, but you have never seen combat as you lack other indicators of full military training and experience. However, you do have calluses from a small rifle, likely skeet-shooting or small game. The military member in your immediate family likely indulged your curiosities by giving you shooting lessons; he may have introduced you to martial arts of some variety, judging by the way in which you move, though dance is a possibility.” He gives her another looking-over. “Clothing is formal but practical; though faded, the colourful stains at the sleeve cuffs and elbows resemble those of so-called ‘washable’ paints favoured by nannies and teachers of early primary school. Sensible shoes would back the teacher hypothesis up—you need to be able to move and move quickly, as small children are wont to do. You are confident and no-nonsense, but your reaction to my behaviour has been mild, suggesting an acclimatisation to behaviours perceived by society at large as being immature or otherwise inappropriate in adults. Most likely place to find such behaviours in enough frequency to produce such an adaptation without an impulse to diagnose? Childcare or primary school. You are the child or sister of a dedicated military member and have taken up employment as a nanny or schoolteacher.”

            “Fucking hell, I’ve missed that,” John breathes. He takes a deep breath and sits forward so he can rest his elbows on the table. Sherlock recognises the posture for the self-calming pose it is.

            “It _is_ quite impressive,” Mary remarks as she glances between John and Sherlock a few times. “I can see why life might be a bit dull without it.” She meets Sherlock’s gaze again and folds her hands, resting her chin atop her laced fingers. “You know, you may be just the men I need, with brains like that. Do either of you know anything about detecting magic?”

            Sherlock opens his mouth to flatly deny the existence of magic, then snaps it shut again when he remembers the company he’s in. “I... don’t,” he says eventually, obviously uncomfortable with the confession.

            John shakes his head when Mary looks to him for a response. “I’m a sphinx and there are dragons in Parliament. That’s all I know.” When she gives him a raised eyebrow, he shrugs and lifts his hands. “Seriously. You’re the first sphinx I’ve met, and the first... er, non-human I’ve knowingly interacted with.”

            “Knowingly?” Sherlock interjects. “What do you mean, ‘knowingly’?”

            John sighs and rolls his eyes. “Sherlock, you didn’t even know what I was until yesterday. The only reason I identified Ms Morstan is because she has a scent similar to mine. If I don’t understand the significance of someone’s scent and they look entirely human, how am I to know that they’re actually an enormous fire-breathing lizard with wings or some kind of faerie? It’s very possible that we’ve run into other non-humans.”

            Sherlock rolls his eyes but doesn’t argue, which is about as close to conceding an argument as he’ll ever get. He turns his attention to Mary and steeples his fingers. “Now, Miss Morstan. Do relate to us your story. Why would you need to detect magic?”

            Mary tucks a few stray hairs behind one ear and takes a bracing breath. “It started just over two years ago, not too long after my father disappeared. Every two months, someone has been sending me pearls—huge, multicoloured pearls, the kind that Imperial dragons would go bonkers over—in the post. I don’t know who they’re from or where they’re being posted from; there’s no return address or name on the cartons. Every carton comes with a letter, and while the first one was vague and rambling but generally harmless, the past four have been increasingly bizarre.”

            “Bizarre how?”

            “They’re disjointed and even more rambling than usual, as if the writer is distressed or maybe even high. The handwriting’s gotten worse, and words that would seem to imply some sort of haunting or curse keep popping up. Either they’re having a paranoid breakdown or they’re actually being pursued by something—my guess is some kind of curse on the pearls, since the writer keeps circling back to the pearls, the pearls, the pearls. I’d check for curses myself, but I’m rubbish at everything but sympathetic magic, so curses are a bit outside my expertise. I just want to know who’s sending these pearls and the letters, and why they’re sending them. I don’t want to end up with the same affliction.”

            Sherlock straightens up and folds his arms. “I have only just been introduced to this... supernatural reality, if you will. I will work first with what I am familiar with—do you have any of the letters or pearls with you?”

            Mary shakes her head and sighs. “I left them in my safety deposit box in London before I came here. I... they frighten me, really. If there’s another, it’ll be arriving at my flat today or tomorrow. I didn’t want to deal with it just yet, and my schedule allowed for a holiday this summer, so... here I am.”

            Heaving a sigh and sitting back in his chair, Sherlock tips his head back. “John. You may talk now; I am thinking.”

            Mary chuckles and raises her eyebrows at John, who merely shrugs. “He’s territorial _and_ he’s got you trained!” she teases gently.

John feels a sudden, aching spike of shame and fury at the intimation that he, John Watson, a Captain and a very competent doctor, was somehow... _whipped_ by a too-tall toddler in a stupid coat.

His thoughts must show on his face, because Mary sits up abruptly and starts apologising. John almost instantaneously goes from frustrated to mortified. He raises a hand to quiet her, shaking his head. “Don’t... don’t worry about it,” he manages after a moment. “You’re fine, Ms Morstan.” He’s not sure how to explain the fact that Sherlock had faked his own suicide and left John to stagger out of the ruins of their life alone, or the feeling that he only exists in the detective’s shadow. He’s not sure how to describe the emotional whiplash that’s lurking somewhere in his subconscious, or the daunting task of suddenly re-engaging an old enemy—balancing Sherlock-and-John and John-as-John. It could take hours to explain, so John boils it down to the simplest terms. “We have... a bit of a history.”

            He sees it immediately when Mary misinterprets that—she gives Sherlock a speculative once-over, then does the same with John. “Oh. I see,” she says, and she’s giving him a very suggestive little smile... John blushes, stuffs his denials in a box because ‘the gentleman doth protest too much’ is very much a thing, and scrambles for a change of subject.

            “So! Er, you’re... a sphinx, too, then!” he blurts, ignoring the smile that’s tipping one corner of Mary’s lips up. “When was your first change?”

            Mary looks briefly perplexed. “First...” She’s well aware of John’s attempt to change the topic and gives him a knowing, amused look. “There’s a silly question. Trying to avoid an awkward subject, are we?”

“Yes, actually! We’re not a couple!” he sniffs, failing utterly to look composed. When the waiter returns with their meals, John has to restrain a serious impulse to hug the man for providing a distraction.

While they’re eating, John begins to wonder. “I didn’t know I was anything but human until I was eighteen,” he says between bites of his sandwich. “Didn’t you start out... normal?”

            Mary furrows her brow and tilts her head curiously. “If by normal you mean human, then no. Both of my parents were sphinxes—to me, that’s normal. Mum was born to a human woman, but by the time she had me, there wasn’t enough human blood left to affect the shape I started in.”

            Sherlock, who had wolfed down his fish and chips like a man starved before returning to his ceiling-staring and thinking, snaps his chin down and fixes Mary with a disapproving glare. “That makes no sense,” he growls.

            “It does if you account for magic bleed,” Mary retorts. “Sphinxes, dragons, phoenixes, some of the fey, and one or two other greater nonhumanoids are inherently magical, right down to their genes, and natural magic like that changes everything it touches. It takes time—in cases of sphinx ‘half-bloods’, they’re sphinx enough to change shape by twenty and are considered fullblooded by forty years of age. The human shape’s just a structure the body remembers by that point.”

            Sherlock looks almost pained. “This is ridiculous,” he complains. “Hateful. The laws of science are not _optional_. You simply should not be able to erase a genotype!”

            “The laws of science are upheld,” Mary replies coolly, “because, whilst humanity has documented the laws of the mundane parts of reality, we nonhumans have been diligently documenting the laws that govern magic and the magical, and there are times when magical law overrules mundane law. If you can sort out the pearls and letters, Mr Holmes, I will personally buy you an entire set of reference texts.”

            John can’t contain his giggles—Sherlock looks like he’s just been offered free rein over the cadaver of someone with chimerism—so he tries to muffle them with the last of his sandwich. The detective composes himself with his usual aplomb, but it’s clear that Mary knows she’s got his interest. “You need not trouble yourself,” he rumbles, ignoring John’s snort of disbelief. “Your problem is an interesting one; a five, at least, even without the intrigue of a murder. When can I see these letters?”

            “Whenever you’re back in London,” Mary responds evenly. “I’ll be leaving in four days; school starts in two weeks and I need to be ready.” She opens her purse and withdraws a card; she winks when she hands it to John. “Call me when you and your pet genius are back in town.”

            John laughs; Sherlock scowls and waves for the check. “Pet!” he scoffs, glaring back at the waiter as he fumbles with papers. “Pet! I am not the one with fur and feathers!” He pauses for a moment, brow furrowed in confusion rather than vexation. “Do checks normally come with boxes?”

            Twisting to look back toward the register, John sees that the waiter has a small box and an envelope in one hand. “No. No, they don’t,” he confirms, turning to Mary. She’s gone pale and tight-lipped, but not panicked—if anything, she looks well on her way to the sort of angry that gets things done. John can’t help thinking it’s a good look on her; he’s always liked the headstrong ones.

            Sherlock stands and strides across the restaurant in a swirl of charcoal wool, chin high and grey eyes flashing. He waylays the waiter, seizes the envelope and box, eyes the receipt, and slaps thirty quid into the boy’s open hand before turning on his heel and returning to John and Mary. “We are leaving,” he says, sweeping up the groceries before chivvying John and Mary ahead of him and out of the Inn. “John will undoubtedly extend an invitation for you to accompany us back to his place of residence,” he rumbles. “I intend to examine the letter and package there.”

            Mary looks at John, who shrugs. “Whatever you want to do, Miss Morstan. It’s up to you—we’re just here to help.”

 

            ***

 

            Mary and Sherlock sit down at the kitchen table; John busies himself making room in the refrigerator for the groceries.

            “This is expensive stationery,” Sherlock remarks after extracting the letter and toying with the envelope a bit. “In fact, the letter and envelope match—this is custom stationery, part of a set. Smythson’s Ermine White Laid writing paper, to be precise; one of their more popular papers. No monogramming, so he’s not vain—what vain man doesn’t emblazon his name upon all of his correspondence?”

            Mary looks up from examining the little carton. “How can you be so sure it’s a man doing this?” she queries.

            “Handwriting,” Sherlock says, pointing to the scrawl on the front of the envelope and in the letter. “Graphology is notoriously unreliable in most areas; however, there is a statistically reliable correlation between handwriting style and sex, if not gender. It isn’t anywhere close to perfect, but a two out of three success rate makes it a reasonable tool to start with when developing a profile of a writer. The handwriting here is cramped, ungainly, and uneven; more often than not, such traits are common to male handwriting.” He skims the letter, angles the paper, sniffs it, and then touches his tongue delicately to the ink. “Ink is expensive, laid down by a fountain pen by the looks of it, fine stub italic. No spattering or signs of catching, very even ink application—this is a man utterly accustomed to writing with a fountain pen but who is not a calligrapher, since his handwriting is altogether too unsightly. Suggests old money or considerable eccentricity. Scent of Eastern tobacco, balsam, and rosewater—a hookah smoker. Not enormously helpful, but a start.”

            John finishes putting away the last of the groceries and sits down at the end of the table. “Does the letter say anything that might give us more information?”

            “Dear Miss Morstan,” Sherlock reads, “I am so very sorry to impose upon you yet again this token of my penance! I pray that it finds you in good health, having fled the...” Here Sherlock’s words seem to catch in his throat; gazing incredulously at the page, he coughs the words out as if they’ve gone foul on his tongue. “... fled the howling cultural desert that is the city London.” John stifles a chuckle, Mary cringes, and Sherlock looks ill. He only gets halfway through a skim of the letter before throwing it down in disgust. “I cannot read more of this drivel! You have received how many of these... _things?_ ”

            None of them move to pick up the letter; Mary begins to open the little carton instead. “Thirteen, now.” She tips the little box and catches a truly _monstrous_ pearl in her cupped palm. It’s nearly three centimetres in diameter and white as snow, but the reflections on its surface shine in every colour imaginable. It’s beautiful bordering on hypnotic; even Sherlock looks a bit dazed.

            “Jesus Christ,” John says, leaning in to look more closely. He’s not sure some of those colours are even real. “You’ve got _thirteen_ of those?”

            “That’s what I don’t understand!” Mary says, exasperated. “Why would anyone send me this sort of thing as ‘penance’ when I don’t even know what they’ve done wrong? I’ve checked everything—bank statements, the house, my mum’s jewellry, newspapers, everything! Nothing has changed, yet there’s someone sending me these! There simply must be a catch, or a reason.” She turns to Sherlock. “I know there isn’t a lot to work with, but do you have any ideas?”

            Sherlock manages to tear his gaze from the gem but takes a second to properly process the question. When he does come to an answer, however, he nods grimly. “One thing is certain. Whoever it is, they know where you are.”

            Mary goes pale and tight-lipped; John visibly bristles. “Define ‘know’, Sherlock.” His voice has gone hard and cold, the way Sherlock remembered when he'd threatened Dzundza in the planetarium.

            “Know as in ‘Miss Morstan is being tracked’, John, obviously." Sherlock retorts. "They found her at the Inn. I would not be surprised if they found her here, also.”

            John glances at the front door, then looks back at Sherlock and Mary. “Is this going to be a danger to her? To us? Do they have someone _watching?_ ” He springs to his feet abruptly and prowls to the front door. He glances out of the windows to either side, agitated and scowling. Sherlock can see his military training resurfacing as he carefully scans the tree line and then the canopy of the surrounding woods. “Is there someone _following_ us now?”

            “Ideally, no. We have no evidence that anyone means Miss Morstan harm, or that the writer is aware of or troubled by our presence. They could very well be tracking her mobile, John. Using an actual scout would be terribly inefficient.”

            “It’s not impossible,” John growls, disappearing into the library briefly. Sherlock is certain that, were it not for the chirping floorboards, he would not be hearing John’s progress through the house at all. He wonders just how insistent the media had been after his death, if this was John’s reaction to being followed. “I fucking _hate_ stalkers,” John spits as he returns to the front door. “If they’re not following you wherever you go, they’re hacking your phones or your blogs or taking pictures of you through your own bloody windows! Whatever happened to fucking privacy?” He throws the front door open and storms out, closing it behind himself with a frustrated slam.

            Mary glances worriedly at Sherlock, who merely shrugs and sits back in his chair. “It’s not an unreasonable course of action.” Perhaps an unreasonable level of agitation, but certainly not defensively unsound.

“Fair enough, but he seems a little too upset. Is he all right?”

            Sherlock gives Mary a long look. He doesn’t see the sort of alarm that results in rejection or alienation in her bearing or expression—instead, there’s merely gentle, slightly detached concern. It’s that distinction that earns Mary a notch towards ‘acceptable’ in his mental dossiers. “One of the reasons John moved out here was to escape the media,” Sherlock offers. He jumps when the soft-edged booms of giant wingbeats shake the cottage—apparently John is unsatisfied with a cursory search of the area. “There were also a number of individuals with grudges; John assisted in my investigations, many of which ended in prison sentences.”

            He sees it when it clicks for Mary, can almost read the rearrangement of her understanding like text scrolling by on a marquee. He sees the obnoxiously obvious questions just waiting to be voiced, but after a long moment, she sighs and shakes her head. “I should have cottoned on when you introduced yourself. Some clever girl I am.” One corner of her mouth tips up wryly. “I’d ask why you’re not dead, but I don’t doubt that I’ll hear all about it at some point. For now, do you have any ideas about the letter?”

            Sherlock reluctantly revises his opinion of Mary upward again for her pragmatism. If she keeps this up, he thinks, he’ll have no grounds on which to keep her from taking John away, and then where will he be?

            Beset by a flock of winged kitten-toddlers, possibly.

Sherlock represses a shudder.

            He leaves off contemplating such disturbing hypotheticals to consider Mary’s question. “I have several ideas, but nothing definite as of yet. You said your father disappeared some time ago?”

            Mary nods. “Just over two years ago. His helicopter was fired on and forced to land while travelling from Kabul to Bastion. The bodies of the crew were all accounted for, but my father and the two Majors that had been with him were nowhere to be found. Had a militant cell captured them, we would have heard something by now. They tend to announce those sorts of things.”

            Sherlock adds a few more possible motivations to his list. “I’m afraid I can’t confirm or deny anything about our perpetrator or his motives beyond what I’ve already found. It could be related to your father, but it could just as easily be something completely unrelated. There simply isn’t enough data to work with yet.”

            Mary sits back and folds her arms. “I’ve never been very good at the whole ‘patient’ bit,” she sighs, green eyes focussed somewhere out the window. “Even if it upsets Dr Watson, I almost hope he finds someone. I’m rather done with not knowing what’s going on.”

Sherlock can’t help but agree. He’s found that, of all the steps that go into executing his Work, the most difficult one by far is waiting for the next piece of the puzzle. 


	6. on every golden scale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got away from me. It's loooong.
> 
> I couldn't decide where to split it, so have a really long chapter, everyone!
> 
> Hopefully it's interesting enough to make up for the slog.

            Sherlock is shaken out of his thoughts when a flurry of percussive wingbeats sets the windows rattling in their frames. There’s a light thump from upstairs, followed by a series of squeaks as John pads out of his room and down the stair. He enters the kitchen with his wings only half-settled and the tawny fur on his hackles bristling—there’s a narrow white envelope between his teeth.

 

            “A messenger by proxy,” Sherlock comments, taking the envelope and smoothing out the dents in the paper left by John’s formidable cuspids. “Local youth, no doubt.”

 

            John nods briskly as he hops up and settles himself in one of the chairs at the table; he misses Mary’s appreciative once-over (Sherlock, of course, notices immediately, mostly because he’s doing exactly the same thing) as he resettles his wings. “A middle-aged man with curly salt-and-pepper hair, a beard, and leathery-tan skin handed over forty quid, the envelope, and _my address_.” His feathers and the thicker ruff of sandy-gold fur about his shoulders ruffle with indignation.

 

            Sherlock merely opens the envelope. “Whoever the man might be, he isn’t the one sending the pearls. This is standard printer paper in a cheap envelope—it’s not even the right size. He had to fold one side of the letter to fit it.” He unfurls the letter with a flick of his wrist. “Block lettering, highly legible, precise. ‘To the doctor, Colonel Morstan’s girl, and the dead detective—I don’t have anything against any of you personally, but until one of you or Major Sholto’s remaining boy tell me where Colonel Morstan and/or the Agra cache are, not one of you may expect peace or safety. You will bring the Colonel, the cache, or the location of either to Millbank Millenium Pier by twenty one hundred hours today.’ A demand for money, then.”

 

            John’s pretty sure there’s more commentary, but he’s too busy staring at Mary in something like shock. “Morstan. I should have made the connection. Colonel Morstan. That’s your _father_? He’s a sphinx? Why are they asking where he is? Is he okay?”

 

            Mary looks surprised, then sad; dread twists to life just under John’s ribs. “Yes, he’s my father,” she says softly. “He’s... well, he’s been missing for a little over two years now. I have no idea where he is, or what the Agra cache is.” She sighs, shakes her head. “I take it you served with him. He never told you what he was?”

 

            “Not even a hint at it,” John replies, his frustration over their apparent stalker evaporating into dismay at the news. It’s a shock to hear that Colonel Morstan is gone, and it’s a shock to hear that he’d been in hiding like John all along. Small wonder the Colonel had been so... friendly, for lack of a better word. He’d always wondered why the typically detached, aloof officer had taken such a liking to him. “He’s the one who helped me take my case against Moran to the higher-ups. He fast-tracked my evacuation to Bastion when I got shot, and then to London when the typhoid got out of control. I would have died if it weren’t for his interference. Oh my God. I’m so sorry.” He puts on a brave face, but the limp droop of his wings belies his expression. “God, I hope Moran didn’t have anything to do with him vanishing.”

 

            There’s a moment of quiet where Sherlock and Mary both look at John looking at the table, head and wings low. Mary gives Sherlock a meaningful look; Sherlock nods almost imperceptibly. It’s agreed—John simply must not be allowed to assign himself the blame for the Colonel’s disappearance.

 

            “I saw no evidence of any operations involving hostage-taking, raids, or shooting people down in Afghanistan while I was combing Moran’s financial records,” Sherlock says, breaking the quiet. “It wasn’t until he fixated on me that Moriarty started taking serious risks, and even then Moran was fighting it the entire time. Moran wanted their profits to be as low-risk as possible; he hated Moriarty’s relative flagrance. In the end, I think he hated me for triggering Moriarty’s self-destruction more than he ever hated you or the Colonel.”

 

            John looks somewhat convinced.

 

“I don’t know a lot about Moriarty beyond what was written in the papers, and I expect most of that is wrong or heavily edited,” Mary adds, “but I doubt an average or even an above-average man could waste time on petty revenge while working on taking the helm of a network previously run by a genius, however deranged.” She reaches over (hesitates briefly, tacitly asking permission) to pat the wrist of John’s wing. “Don’t blame yourself. Dad was cautious because he understood risk—when he acted, he acted in full understanding of the potential consequences.”

 

John smiles, leans almost imperceptibly into the gentle touch. Sherlock’s not sure how he feels about it until John gives him a smile that’s just as warm as the one he gave Mary, if not more so. “Jesus, I must look a wreck if you’re double-teaming me,” he chuckles. “Really, I’ll be fine. Talk about the ruddy letter before I go into hyperglycemic shock from all this coddling.”

 

Mary sticks her tongue out at John and gives him a cheeky nudge. “All business, are you then?” she laughs. “If you insist, I suppose we can flog something out of it.” She picks up the letter, reads it over, and scrutinizes the handwriting.

 

“From what I could gather, Miss Morstan—”

 

Mary doesn’t even look up from the letter as she silences Sherlock with a quick “Ah!” and a neat, brisk ‘cut’ gesture that wouldn’t look out of place in front of an orchestra. “I want to give this a try. You make it seem as simple as some of the puzzles I give my students on Fridays.”

 

Sherlock swallows his irritation at her interruption and allows Mary to think, not because he is at all cowed or curious or possibly approaching something resembling respect, but because it will be entertaining when her noviceship (and his superiority) inevitably becomes evident. He ignores John’s expression of tickled, smug amusement.

 

“Well... there isn’t a whole lot to go on, but the writer’s used ‘twenty one hundred’ instead of ‘nine o’clock’—not unusual, granted, but he also referred to my father as ‘Colonel’ and mentioned a Major Sholto,” Mary says after a minute of thought. “His handwriting is neat and precise like you said, Mr Holmes, carefully so. It would probably remain legible even after being dragged through mud, sand, water, and God only knows what else; it’s likely that’s exactly why he uses such a print, to ensure legibility even through damaging conditions. It looks rather like my father’s, in fact. It isn’t a certainty, but if I’m picking up the right clues, I think it fairly likely that our writer is military or ex-military. Granted, he could be a delivery-person with a sibling or parent in the military, but he wouldn’t be as likely to know my father or whoever Major Sholto is by name. So, military or ex.”

 

            For one very brief moment, Sherlock experiences an emotion that’s two parts pleased, one part utterly vexed, and seven parts ‘oh fucking hell’. He knows how to deal with vapidity and plebeian delusions of competence, but earned confidence? Intelligence? A natural (if unrefined) observational faculty? Mary Morstan is intriguing and terrifying, all at once. Nowhere near as inscrutable as The Woman, but formidable in her own right. Some of what he is feeling must show in his expression, because John bursts into poorly muffled giggles. “Are you quite certain that you need my services, Miss Morstan?” Sherlock ripostes in an effort to save face. “You seem to have things well in hand.”

 

            Mary folds her arms and regards Sherlock with an air of resigned tolerance. “I suppose I wouldn’t call it a ‘need’ at this point—I now have a name to research—but judging by what this new letter has to say, you boys are involved in whatever this is whether I like it or not,” she sighs loftily. She winks at John, whose giggles begin to escape from their restraint. “I suppose I’ll just have to put up with you two tagging along for the ride. Don’t bodge it up,” she concludes, the very picture of put-upon.

 

            Sherlock splutters.

 

            John nearly falls out of his chair laughing.

 

***

 

            After John’s giggles finally die away and Sherlock’s fit of pique passes, there’s a general consensus amongst the three that a return to London is necessary. Sherlock wants to see the other pearls and letters, Mary wants to find out more about Major Sholto, and John doesn’t want to let the detective out of his sight just yet, so John has Sherlock call Mycroft to ask for a car to be sent.

 

            “Help yourself to anything in the fridge,” John says as he rummages through cabinets for his tea and spices (he’d gone upstairs and changed back to his human form to pack; folding clothes isn’t easy without opposable thumbs). “The car won’t be here for another hour and a half or so, probably. Do you want tea? I can make tea.”

 

            Mary agrees to tea; John has jasmine and cardamom, her favourite. As he busies himself with the kettle, she busies herself with the half-constructed model tall ship sitting in the window.

 

            She catches a whiff of something floral, honeyed, and slightly astringent as she gently lowers the model to the table. There’s a little, spherical glass bottle balanced on the rear deck of the ship that seems to be the source of the scent. Sitting just underneath the bauble is an open safety pin with a tiny cork speared on one end.

 

            Mary’s eyes widen when she sees the ink drawings covering the surface of the cork. Sympathetic magic (her specialty) relies heavily on symbolism, so she immediately recognises the significance of the miniscule, meticulously drawn images. “John?”

 

            “Hmm?”

 

            Mary lifts the pin and cork. “Do you know what this is?”

 

            John turns, sees what Mary is holding, and nods. “It was the stopper in a little, water-filled bauble Sherlock’s brother gave me to hold onto. Sherlock was fiddling with it earlier today; I startled him in the middle of looking at it, and he dropped the bottle. It spilled on the model, so I put it in the window to dry.”

 

            “Oh,” Mary says. That explains the scent—heather mead (symbolic of longevity, vitality) and royal jelly (a component of many preservative and rejuvenating spells and poultices, frequently included in attempts to produce philosopher’s stones). The Ouroboros and infinity knots make more sense now, too. Taken together, the intent of the components resembles that of the stasis charms her mother uses for her plants... well, intensified by a few magnitudes, but it’s essentially the same idea.  Mary wonders if John has any idea what he’d actually been given. “Did Sherlock’s brother tell you what it was?”

 

            “No,” John says, turning from the kettle to pay closer attention. “What is it? Do you know?”

 

            “It’s a preservative spell,” Mary says. John looks dubious but not dismissive, so Mary points out the little drawings on the cork. “If there aren’t runes or symbolic things for me to find, I can’t detect a whit of magic, but this—look here, on the cork. There are infinity knots and Ouroboros, both symbols of eternity. That smell? That’s heather mead and royal jelly. They’re both strong components of preservation-related spells. Mum uses them in her charms to keep her orchids in bloom.”

 

            John gives Mary a concerned look. “What’s it preserving? Did we ruin it by spilling it?”

 

            “Not quite. It’s likely that this spell is bound to the bottle. Bottles are containers, which tend to represent the ‘wholeness’ of the spell. Corks and contents serve more as foci during the initial construction. Mum likes to use bundles or packets, so the spell’s cohesion is bound up in the twine or the envelope.” She picks up the bottle and carefully examines it. Other than a bit of wax remaining at the lip, it’s unblemished and unbroken. “Without the foci, it’s much more delicate, but since it’s unbroken, the spell is just barely intact and functioning.”

 

            John looks perplexed. “Bound to the... it’s preserving the bottle?”

 

            “No, no, the spell’s intact-ness is bound to the bottle’s intact-ness. Bottle whole, spell whole. Bottle broken, spell broken. What it’s preserving, I have no idea. It probably uses sympathetic magic to affect the target, so distance is irrelevant. It could be anything, anywhere.”

 

            Anything, anywhere—John doubts that. When Mycroft is involved, it’s going to be something much, much closer to home. Too close to home. He’s about to suggest putting the bottle somewhere as soft, hidden, and protected as possible when a long-fingered hand deftly plucks the bottle from the deck of the model and flicks it straight onto the table.

 

            The bottle shatters. Mary stares, shocked; Sherlock merely watches and waits for something to happen. John, face drawn and pale, straightens, turns off the hob, and marches out of the room without a word.

 

            There’s a long moment of silence.

 

            “You really are an idiot for a genius detective,” Mary groans, dropping the pinned cork atop the remains of the bottle. “You had no idea—no idea!—what that spell was preserving, so you decide to simply break it and see what happens?” She turns in her chair, fixes Sherlock with a stern, green-eyed glare. “Mum uses these for flowers, but I’ve heard of them being used to keep advanced diseases at bay, or to keep someone alive just long enough to get them to help after an accident. That was a powerful, powerful spell, Sherlock. It could very well be keeping someone _alive_.”

 

            “Have been keeping,” Sherlock corrects. “I doubt it was anything vital. My brother gave it to John in front of me without explaining what it was. He knew I would be curious about it, and he knows that any delicate things I am curious about tend to succumb to entropy rather sooner than later.”

 

            Mary glances out of the kitchen door. She can hear John’s shaky breathing and sotto voce sobs as he attempts to master himself in the other room. As clueless as Sherlock seems to be about the risks he just took, John is clearly all too aware. Frustrated for John’s sake, she grabs Sherlock by the lapels and drags him down so his face is level with hers. He resists, but she is a sphinx. His strength is negligible in comparison. “I suspect you overestimate the sturdiness of Doctor Watson’s emotional state,” she growls, just loud enough for Sherlock to hear her. His strange, agate eyes go wide with surprise at the wild, _nonhuman_ tone that bleeds through. It might also be the sight of the sharp, too-white teeth of a predator that does it, but Mary can’t be sure. “I am forcibly recommending you go apologise. _Now_.”

 

            When she releases his lapels, Sherlock comes as close to skittering out of the room as Mary suspects she’ll ever see. She listens as the idiot detective slinks into the library and settles next to John—she hears John’s breathing hitch and the distinctive rustle of an embrace being given. She hears them murmuring, could probably discern the words, but her mind is elsewhere.

 

            Being a sphinx, Mary forms a scent-impression of a person just as much as she forms a visual or aural impression. In the village shop, where John had been sun-warmed vetiver, tea, leather, and the alluring saffron-cumin-musk of healthy-full-blooded-male-sphinx, Sherlock had been strangely murky, even for a human. She had caught hints of citrus-spice and fog, but past that, the scent that marked him as human-male-adult had been... dulled, somehow. She’d assumed he was ill or perhaps a substance abuser and hadn’t given it another thought.

 

            Now, though, his scent is coming through strong and clear. The citrus-spice has resolved into wild blackberry and bergamot; the vaguely foggish scent has deepened and purified itself into the crisp, silvery-chill, slightly petrochemical scent of a midnight London fog in late October. He still smells human, but something else—something emphatically _not_ human—has fitted into the scent like a missing piece. It’s almost as if his old scent had had the vitality and energy very neatly excised from it.

 

            Mary glances down at the shattered remains of the bottle and wonders. There’s no doubt that the stasis charm had been very strong, but if it had been powerful enough to hold a nonhuman heritage in complete stasis... well, she hopes this brother of Sherlock’s didn’t buy or bargain for the charm. Holding back an entire bloodline is the sort of old magic that used to require things like kings forsaking the crown or mothers bargaining away their children. Depending on what the bloodline the spell was holding back is, it could have come at an even steeper cost than usual—halting magic bleed takes immense power and hundreds (if not thousands) of years of expertise. Spells that powerful always cost something integral, something precious, and even the best of such trades never quite work out in the favour of the one making the sacrifice.

 

            Now there’s the question of how to tell Sherlock and John. ‘Oh yes, sorry to horn in on your male bonding, but the detective smells funny now and I think he might not be human’ is bound to go over just _smashingly_.

 

            Fortunately, there’s a knock at the door. Mary, already on her feet and glad for a distraction, is first to answer.

 

            There’s a gorgeous brunette in dress slacks and a silk blouse standing there, pecking away on a slick, thin piece of technology with a label that claims it’s a BlackBerry. She’s human, but she smells _dangerous_ and just dragonish enough to warn anyone with a nose from trying any funny business. Dragons are notoriously protective of their employees. Well, unless said employee betrays the dragon, but most employees aren’t that stupid. “Yes?” Mary asks, confused by the woman’s lack of greeting.

 

            “Car,” the brunette says simply, never once lifting her eyes from her science-fiction-movie mobile.

 

Mary looks out to the driveway—there’s a black saloon waiting, emitting the characteristic thrum of an electric motor. “Who sent it?” When no answer is forthcoming, Mary starts to get annoyed with the posh woman and her bespoke gadget.

 

            John appears at Mary’s shoulder. “Clytemnestra,” he says, sounding surprised. “You got here quickly.”

 

            The brunette glances up once. It’s so brief that Mary almost misses it. “Orithyia,” she says. There might be a smile tugging at one corner of her mouth.

 

            John, still a warm presence at Mary’s left, chuckles. “Someday I’ll see your real name by accident on a file somewhere and it’ll be something unutterably plain,” he says good-naturedly. He disappears (taking his warmth with him) and leaves Mary at the door with ‘Orithyia’.

 

            “I take it we will need to stop at your residence?” the brunette queries from behind her phone.

 

            Mary gives ‘Orithyia’ a long look, but the woman is as blank as a fresh slate. “You don’t need directions, do you,” she sighs. It’s not a question.

 

            Orithyia honours that with a brief glance and a briefer smile.

 

            “Right, here we are,” John says, slipping past Mary with an army-issue duffel slung over his right shoulder. Sherlock waits until Mary steps out to exit, shut the front door, and lock it. “Mary, do we need to stop at your place?”

 

            “Not for long,” she replies. “Was going home soon anyway, so I’m half-packed.”

 

            They put John’s duffel in the boot and pile into the back of the saloon. Orithyia takes the front passenger seat and gives the driver (a conspicuously plain man in a neatly-pressed suit) a nod. With that, the saloon rolls down the drive.

 

            ***

 

            Sherlock stands before the door to 221 Baker Street, hand on the knocker. John and Mary flank him, waiting for him to actually knock on the door like he’s supposed to. They’ve already dropped off Mary’s things at her flat, gone and gotten the rest of the pearls and letters from her safety deposit box, and then collected a lasagne dinner from Angelo (who had hugged Sherlock so ferociously that his back cracked and his feet left the floor); all that remains is to see Mrs Hudson and to go upstairs to examine the facts of the case before going to meet the second letter-writer at the pier.  
  
            It’d be going brilliantly were it not for Sherlock’s hesitation holding things up a bit. “Afraid of our landlady, are you?” John teases as Sherlock drops his hand from the knocker a fourth time.

 

            “There’s going to be _crying_ ,” Sherlock groans, making a moue of distaste.

 

            Mary gives him a nudge. “If she cared a whit about you, then _obviously_ there’ll be crying. Think of it as a compliment. Hurry up. The sooner you knock, the sooner the crying will be over with.”

 

            There’s logic in that plan, but Sherlock doesn’t look too keen on following through. John sighs, rolls his eyes, gives Mary a longsuffering look, and reaches up to do the knocking for his two-year-old of a resurrected best friend.

 

            It’s a moment or two before Mrs Hudson arrives at the door; Sherlock’s anxious fiddling escalates as the sounds of their landlady approaching become audible. When the door finally opens and Mrs Hudson sees and registers Sherlock on the doorstep, Sherlock plasters a truly awkward not-quite-a-smile on his face and says, “Hello. I’m not dead. Please don’t cry. Or faint. Or slap me. Especially not that.”

 

            Mrs Hudson obliges Sherlock’s wishes—she doesn’t cry, faint, or slap him. She does, however, land a right hook so sound that John and Mary have to catch him before he topples right off the doorstep.

 

            Later, after Mrs Hudson grabs Sherlock by his coat lapels, drags him into her sitting room, forcibly sits him on the sofa, and abandons him there to fuss and clatter around in her kitchen for a few minutes (Mary sits next to Sherlock while John gently examines the bruise forming on the left side of Sherlock’s jaw), she emerges with tea, biscuits, and a decidedly calmer appearance. “Sherlock Holmes, I am dreadfully cross with you,” she says, shaking her head reprovingly. She pours tea for John and Mary. “I’m Martha Hudson, dear,” she says as she hands Mary her tea. “It’s been a long time, but these two rented out 221B upstairs three years ago.”

 

            Mary smiles winningly. “Mary Morstan, ma’am. You must have the patience of a saint to put up with the both of them.” John protests and receives a cheeky glimpse of the tip of a pink tongue for his trouble. “You’ll have to share your secrets. I’m solving a mystery, and they’re coming along; I’ll need the hints if I’m to get anything done.” At that, Sherlock registers protest as well; he receives an elbow and a green-eyed wink.

 

            Mrs Hudson looks at John (blushing, pointedly not looking at Mary) and Sherlock (stymied, pouting yet tolerant), sets down the teapot, and offers Mary her hand. “You and I, dear,” she says with a pleased smile, “are going to get along famously, I suspect.” Settling herself in an armchair with her own cuppa, Mrs Hudson turns to Sherlock. “Now, young man, you’re to explain yourself and do it well. There had best be an excellent excuse for such a horrid plan.”

 

            ***

 

            It’s nearly eight by the time Sherlock has related his story to Mrs Hudson’s satisfaction. She takes it surprisingly well (then again, given the way she’d handled him showing up on her doorstep, perhaps it’s not so surprising), gasping in all the appropriate places, crinkling her nose in distaste at the mention of Moriarty, and only getting a little bit sniffly when he finishes telling the tale. She grabs Sherlock up in a hug afterwards, which he gently returns, and, after appropriating a hug from John, sends them upstairs. “You have a case to solve with a lovely young lady,” she says, one arm about the detective’s waist and the other about the doctor’s. “Go to it. I’ll have plenty of time to see you when you’re done.”

 

            Sherlock takes this as permission to requisition the bag of cartons and letters from Mary before bolting upstairs.

 

            Standing at the foot of the stairs, Mary looks at John, who offers an apologetic smile. He can tell that she’s still thinking about everything she just heard. “So... how... are you not... I don’t know, a mess?” she asks, her head tilting in a posture he’d often seen Sherlock use to seem sympathetic or worried when shamming information out of a witness. Seeing the honest version of it is a bit different, especially since it’s aimed at him. No one else had really done that, after. Even Ella had been... not unsympathetic, but perhaps a bit cold. It had felt like no one understood why he was grieving. ‘Forget him, he was bonkers,’ they said. ‘He made you watch him die, he was so selfish, you should get mad and move on,’ they said. Not that John had bought into any of that. He’d never stopped believing that it had been Moriarty, malignance incarnate, who’d pushed Sherlock over the edge. It’s still frustrating, even now.

 

            Realising suddenly that he’s been standing there woolgathering while Mary waits for an answer, John shrugs and starts up the stairs. “Oh, it’s all there,” he says, because it’s true, “but what’s the point?” He doesn’t really want to get into it. It’s complicated and sticky and honestly, what _is_ the point? “Not like I had much of a life while he was... uh, gone. Things are better now.”

 

            John can see that Mary is a bit concerned by that—delicately arched brows furrow just a bit as her green eyes search his face carefully—but he can also see it when she decides that he can handle it himself. “You know, he smells different since he broke that charm.”

 

            Glancing upstairs and listening just long enough to confirm that Sherlock was in the flat and not listening in, John nods. “I know.” If Sherlock’s scent had been fascinating before, it was downright spellbinding now—John could hardly miss the change when he found himself suddenly fighting the urge to bury his face in the crook of Sherlock’s neck and never emerge again. He sighs and shakes his head slowly. “I knew the little bottle was something to do with him as soon as you explained what it was. His brother... _worries._ ”

 

            “Meddles?”

 

            “Button cameras and bugs in the flat every month.”

 

            Mary’s green eyes go wide with surprise. “Really?” She looks down and away thoughtfully; John thinks she looks a little troubled. “How far would he go, do you think, to protect Mr Holmes?”

 

            John gives her a look that must say everything it needs to. Mary’s expression is equally eloquent—she’s worried. Very, very worried. “Is Sherlock in danger?” John has to ask.

 

            “No. Doctor Watson, spells like that are... well, they’re expensive, and I don’t mean monetarily.” Mary turns her gaze upstairs, toward the sound of Sherlock’s heels on the kitchen floor. “I’m not sure what he is, but Mr Holmes isn’t human, and his brother probably paid very dearly indeed to have that repressed.”

 

            John nods. He’d had a vague, sneaking suspicion along those lines ever since Mycroft had flashed him a razor-toothed smile. “His brother’s... what was it he called it, a knuckle?” He starts when Mary gasps. “What? What?”

 

            Pale and thin-lipped, Mary plants her hands on John’s shoulders and holds him firmly in place. “He’s a knucker. Tell me he’s not Thraig of Lyminster. Tell me, John.”

             

            John remembers that name from the phone conversation. “That’s his sire—wait, wait, wait!” He grabs Mary’s wrists before she can pull away; she looks downright panicked, and oh God, what has Mycroft gotten them into with that stupid bauble and this knuckle-knucker-whatever business? “Mycroft _hates him_. He said he’d kill him himself if he had the chance.”

 

            The tension doesn’t go out of Mary’s limbs immediately, but she clearly pauses to think that over. “You’re certain?” she asks after a moment. When John nods, she goes limp and leans into John’s grip. “What a mess,” she groans into her arms. “And I thought I had problems with those stupid pearls!” She twists free of John’s slackened hands and chivvies him upstairs. “As soon as we’ve sorted all this pearl business out, you, Mr Holmes, and I have a great, great deal to talk about.”

 

            Just as the two make it up to 221B, Sherlock throws open the door, shouting for John. “Another letter!” he cries, grabbing John’s shoulders (and inadvertently keeping him on his feet) in excitement. He waves a folded card in John’s face. “We have been summoned! He’s sending a cab for us at eight, and it’s eight right now!”

 

            Breaking away, Sherlock flings himself downstairs. John gives chase, glancing back long enough to gesture for Mary to follow. “Wait, wait, Sherlock, _who’s_ sent a cab?! Sherlock! What about the pier? More importantly, do you even recall what happened the last time someone sent a cab for you?!”

 

            Sherlock whirls at the foot of the stairs, face alight with glee. “Forget the pier, you shot the cabbie, and we had Chinese!” he crows, getting behind John and Mary to herd them out the door. Sure enough, a cab is idling outside. “The invitation asks for all three of us—it’s the one with the florid language, he wants us to visit him at his home so that he might ‘impart important information’ to Miss Morstan!” He whips the door to the cab open, ensuring John and Mary have both climbed in before throwing himself in after them.

 

As soon as the cab pulls out into the street, Sherlock’s got his phone out and tapping away, referencing the card he’d been waving in John’s face earlier. Mary leans forward to watch over the top of the phone, and John stares out the window.

 

So Mary’s confirmed it. Sherlock isn’t quite human.

 

            How he’s going to break the news to Sherlock is a complete mystery. John has essentially grown up with his own differences; sure, he’d only started manifesting them in his teens, but he’d been young and flexible enough in his understanding of the world that he’d had no trouble accepting them as reality. Sherlock, on the other hand, is steeped in over thirty years of the hard sciences and absolutes. It’s hard enough to get the man to eat one bloody meal without triggering a rant about transport and careful observation and analysis of his transport’s responses and whatnot; imagining trying to convince Sherlock that his transport isn’t what he thinks it is gives John the beginnings of a headache almost immediately.

 

            Deciding that it might be better to cross that bridge when they come to it, John distracts himself by trying to guess what on Earth Sherlock might be. He doesn’t smell anything like Mary—Mary’s all sun-gilded, windswept grasses and tropical rains over the exotic, subtle musk that’s the ‘sphinx’ part of her scent—but he doesn’t really smell much like Mycroft, either, certainly not enough for the two of them to be full brothers. John suspects that they share a mother, so that leaves any number of fantastical creatures open as possibilities. Not sphinx, not knucker, but the rest... all possible.

 

            Sherlock would have made a handsome sphinx, though, all sleek and black like a panther. A striking contrast to Mary, if she’s the same creamy-golden hue as her hair; John finds himself rather wishing he could see that, or maybe draw it. He’s never seen another sphinx, only pictures and videos of himself, and he’s curious to know if lady sphinxes are smaller, larger, slimmer, sturdier, broad- or narrow-winged...

 

Thoughts of creamy, tapered feathers and broad, sheltering, ebony spans are interrupted by the cabbie announcing their arrival at the Lyceum Theatre. Sherlock hands the cabbie a wad of bills before bursting out of the cab as if spring-loaded; Mary’s right on his heels, leaving John to bring up the rear. Sherlock leads them up to one of the pillars supporting the front portico, bounding up the steps two at a time. Mary follows in kind, beaming and very nearly colliding with Sherlock when he stops. John gives Mary a raised eyebrow when he reaches the apparent rendezvous point; she favours him with a radiant grin. Sherlock looks at them both, apparently caught between amusement and irritation.

 

            Someone clears their throat gruffly, cutting into the strange little moment between the three. Sherlock, John, and Mary turn as one to see a short, burly, nut-brown man standing beside the next pillar over. The man himself is very striking, not so much because of his stature but because of the cobalt blue turban, ornately embroidered bottle-green military jacket, and perfectly pressed white jodhpurs he’s wearing. He sports a full beard that’s been carefully, elaborately braided and bedecked with gem-studded, buttery-golden beads. “Car for Miss Mary Morstan and Messrs Holmes and Watson,” he says. He speaks with a strange, blunt foreign accent in a gravelly basso, deeper even than Sherlock’s.

 

            Mary recovers first. She says something in a language that could be a dialect of Arabic or possibly Hebrew, but a glance at Sherlock tells John that it’s probably something terribly obscure—the detective looks downright perplexed. The uniformed man looks surprised for just a moment before a pleased, closed-lipped smile breaks the stern mask he’d been wearing initially. He responds in the same language with evident relief.

 

            After a moment, Mary turns to John and Sherlock. “He says he’ll be taking us to his employer’s home from here. I just promised that neither of you are policemen.” She turns and asks something in the strange language again; the man responds with a clear negative and a shake of his head. “He won’t tell me where he’s to take us. I reckon you still want to go, Mr Holmes?”

 

            Sherlock sniffs. “Sherlock, and obviously,” he responds, still eyeing the man with no small amount of curiosity.

 

            Mary looks to John. “Doctor Watson?”

 

            “May as well call me John,” he replies easily, “and I reckon we’re up to handling any trouble ourselves if things come to it.”

 

            Mary relays this to their guide, who executes a perfect about-face and sets off down the steps toward a nondescript, white sedan with tinted windows.

 

            “A very curious man,” Sherlock remarks to Mary as they follow the turbaned man. She nods and smiles. “What language were you speaking? I didn’t recognise it.” This last part is said with no small amount of frustration.

 

            “He’s a dwarf,” Mary replies.

 

            Sherlock looks blankly nonplussed; John’s medical mind immediately rules out disproportionate dwarfism before the rest of his brain catches up and it clicks that she means the word in the Tolkien sense rather than the medical. “Christ, really?” he blurts, amazed.

 

            Mary nods. “Really. They don’t usually come to places like London unless they’re some sort of corporate representative, but they’re around.”

 

            “Oh dear God,” Sherlock grumbles. He’s finally cottoned on. “This is madness. First cat-bird-men, now fictional troglodytes—what next? Faeries? Unicorns? Dragons?”

 

            “Sphinxes, Sherlock, not cat-bird-men.” Mary pats Sherlock’s arm soothingly. Sherlock’s expression makes it clear that she’s being anything but. “Oriental Sphinxes, to be precise. The Africans don’t have wings.” She nods to the dwarven driver when he opens the door to the sedan for them.

 

            Sherlock lets out a groan and flops into the car with all the offended misery of a put-upon preteen. Mary follows, chuckling, and then John slides in last.

 

            ***

 

            John has thoroughly lost his bearings. Mary looks lost, too, so to distract himself from his disorientation and building excitement (if the driver is this insistent on being paranoid and trying to hide where they’re going, there must be something very impressive waiting for them at the end of the drive), he tries to tell her about the time he woke up to something on his legs, grabbed his Browning, and nearly shot a caracal that had poked its way into his tent. He ends up telling her about the time he woke up to something on his legs, grabbed his caracal, and nearly shot a Browning that had poked its way into his tent. John has to look out the window for a while—Mary’s giggles keep coming back in force every time their eyes meet.

 

            Sherlock, for his part, keeps a steady watch out his window and murmurs the street names to himself. “Rochester Row,” he says as Mary’s giggles abate for the fifth time. “Vincent Square. Ah, Vauxhall Bridge Road. The river.” There’s a glimpse of reflected streetlamps out his window, but the tinting make it difficult to discern. They’re soon twisting and turning down street after street; how Sherlock keeps up is beyond John. “Wordsworth, Priory. Lark Hall Lane, Stockwell Place, Robert Street, Coldharbour. Interesting.”

 

            “Interesting?” Mary echoes, leaning over Sherlock to peer out his window. John notes that he doesn’t seem to object to Mary’s proximity. “How so?”

 

            Sherlock makes a vague, encompassing sort of gesture at the window. “The area. For someone who seems to reject modern culture, Camberwell seems a counterintuitive choice for a place of residence. A lot of art students, bars, that sort of thing.”

 

            “Could be he’s just bitter about having to live near it all,” John suggests. Sherlock nods—it’s certainly possible.

 

            The saloon turns neatly into a parking space in front of a terrace of brick houses. The driver is out and holding the door open in the blink of an eye; as soon as Sherlock, Mary, and John have disembarked, he shuts it smartly and marches up to the third house, rapping out a syncopated little tattoo on the door.

 

            Another liveried man opens the door. John can’t help staring, first at the man’s truly spectacular, brilliantly ginger handlebar moustache and full beard, and then at the actual ostrich feather that’s stuck into an enormous, jewelled brooch in the front of the man’s turban. He glances at Mary just as she glances at him; they share a wide-eyed look of ‘are you seeing what I’m seeing?’ behind Sherlock’s back.

 

            Their driver gestures for them to follow the new man. “The Sahib awaits you,” he rumbles.

 

            At the same time, there’s a call from within the house. “Show them in to me; show them straight in to me.” The voice is high, thin, and somewhat nasal, like a tremulous, reedy version of Anderson. Sherlock must make the same connection, because John sees his nose crinkle in a lightning-quick moue of distaste.

 

            They’re hastened through a jumbled, cluttered den of a home, down wood-panelled corridors and rooms packed with oddities: rocks bristling with crystals, wood carvings of animals, masks, feathers, wooden boxes, brass-bound trunks, crumbling photographs of various indigenous peoples and sites, bizarre statuary, pottery, Hindu idols, gaudy paisley draperies, woven baskets of all shapes and sizes, overgrown exotic plants, decaying books and yellowing papers in teetering piles, and pristine Persian rugs, the pile as plush and springy as if newly bought. It’s dark and close and claustrophobic, and the old Victorian-style lamps scattered about the place seem only to add to the shadows. The entire place is thickly redolent with smoky nag champa incense; John and Mary are both covering their mouths and noses by the time they’re finally shown into the study.

 

            The sheer weirdness does not stop at their host. Small and round with a high forehead and a bristling fringe of red hair around a scalp so bald it seems polished, he stands nervously beside a desk crammed with yet more papers, items, and _stuff_. He’s puffing away on a huge hookah that stands on a mat next to the desk, and his right hand keeps creeping up to his mouth before he seems to remember it and pull it away. He’s singularly uncharismatic, entirely human, and not very old at all. John feels a bit sorry for him even as he tries to keep from giggling—the poor bloke looks like one of the Tweedle brothers from the old Disney version of Alice in Wonderland.

 

            “At your service, milady, gentlemen, at your service. Pray take a seat in this, my little sanctum. A small place, but richly furnished.”

 

            Sherlock and Mary both sit on the lone uncluttered couch in the room; Mary tugs John down in the small space remaining on her right. He’d normally protest such closeness, but in such a strange place, being crammed into the little sofa with two familiar people and their scents is comforting rather than awkward. Even Sherlock seems to welcome the contact.

 

            “You’ve been sending the pearls?” Mary asks, forthright.

 

            The little man twitches and hops into the chair behind the desk, fiddling with the hookah as his face skips through several contortions of discomfort, apology, and anxiety. “Indeed, that has been my doing,” he manages, taking a deep draw from the hookah. It seems to calm him for a few seconds, long enough to compose another sentence. “Thaddeus Sholto. T-that is my name, and you are Miss Morstan, and with you are Sherlock Holmes and Captain Watson. I have a very grave matter to impart to you, all three of you, and promptly; I do not trust my heart with any more of this business. I am quite certain that my weak mitral valve will give out should there be yet more of a fright.” His hands flutter at his chest and then fan his face.

 

            “Explain, then,” Sherlock snaps.

 

            Sholto gives a great start. “Oh! I did say that more fright should be detrimental to my health, Mr Holmes, do have a care!” He fans himself more. “I have called you here so that Taragdush might have a look at you; he is rather a keen judge of character, and I feared that had I identified myself early, you might have brought unpleasant people with you. I am a man of somewhat retiring, and I might even say refined, tastes, and there is nothing so unaesthetic as a policeman.”

 

            At this, John and Sherlock both chuckle. Sholto seems confusedly pleased, as if he’s not entirely sure how he made them laugh or what to do with them now that they were laughing. “We’ll hold the policemen, then,” says Sherlock, sitting forward to rest his chin atop one hand. “Do carry on.”

 

            “Yes, right, certainly.” Sholto takes another fortifying, pungent lungful from the hookah. “It all begins in Afghanistan, you see, with my father; he was a Major stationed near Jalalabad at the time. He fell in with a man, a Captain Small of dubious morals, who had somehow obtained the coordinates of several caches of treasures left over from the days when Britain was rather more present in India than it is now. My father’s greatest failing was his avarice, and the siren song of such treasures proved far beyond his power to resist. He and Small carried out unauthorised excursions to these coordinates, gathering up the first two treasures.

 

            “This would all be well and good were it not for their failure to explain their absences to their superior officer, your father the Colonel Morstan.” Sholto nods at Mary as he says this. “Morstan, after investigating what my father and Captain Small were up to, proceeded to seize the coordinates from Small’s custody while my father was out with a convoy.

 

            “This was nearly a decade ago, however, and now it comes back to haunt me. Small is convinced that my father plotted to collect the final treasure, the largest of the treasures, himself—in my terror, I implied that the Colonel was complicit in this plan and pointed him in your direction, Miss Morstan.”

 

            Mary has gone pale and tight-lipped; John can just barely hear a rolling growl coming from her. He places a hand on her shoulder and she leans into him, the growl suddenly becoming tangible as well as audible with the additional contact. “My father would do no such thing.” Mary’s tone is flat and harshly disapproving. Sholto squirms nervously. “So the pearls are nothing more than a bribe to keep me happy and out of your hair, then?” It’s not a question, even if it’s phrased like one.

 

            “It was a grave error! An act of craven cowardice I regret to this day!” Sholto squeaks, clutching the lapels of his jacket. The scent of his terror is strong enough to be detectable over the fug of tobacco and incense. “Not even three weeks ago, he has killed my only brother! When he could not find your father, he came after poor Brother Bartholomew, and now he sends fetches to harass me when I have no treasures to my name but my collection of artworks!”

 

            “You have the pearls,” Sherlock notes quietly. Sholto scrambles in a desk drawer, withdraws a small wooden box, and flings it toward the couch. It goes wide, but Sherlock reaches out with one long arm and snatches it from the air. He opens it to reveal a wad of crushed velvet and five more pearls tucked inside.

 

            Sholto is puffing desperately at his hookah. “Anything to avoid Brother Bartholomew’s fate. I know nothing of the Agra cache. Nothing. If my father knew, he took it to his grave this past year.”

 

            Just as Sherlock is about to respond, there’s a sudden crash from outside the doorway. Sholto gives a squawk of fright and vanishes under his desk; John is on his feet and between the couch and the doorway before Sherlock can even stand up. There’s another bang, a shout of alarm, and then the study door bursts inward to admit a bearded, middle-aged man with graying curls and leathery-tan skin.

 

            “I knew you would be here! One of you must know something!” he roars, striding into the middle of the room to regard Sherlock, John, and Mary. “If Sholto is dead and the treasure hidden, you must find it!” He tugs at his beard, and John suddenly realises that he’s not furious—he’s _desperate_. “Oh God, you’ve got to find it. If I can’t pay him, if any of you know something and you won’t speak, he’ll ruin us all, he will. Ruin us... or kill us where we stand.”

                       

 

 

 

            

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! 
> 
> I love the little anecdote in The Sign of the Four where John tries to tell Mary about almost shooting his rifle at a tiger cub in his tent, but ends up telling her about almost shooting his tiger cub at a rifle in his tent. I had to go with a caracal, however, because there aren't tigers in Afghanistan any more. The Caspian tiger, as best as we can estimate, was extinct by 1970. 
> 
> Thanks for reading-- your support has been far more than I ever expected! :)


	7. how cheerfully he seems to grin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings at end notes.
> 
> Happy (belated) birthday, Benedict!
> 
> Also, sorry this took so long. Been working 50-hour weeks and I am utterly shattered... eight hours a day of screaming children is exhausting. 
> 
> Oh-- again, 'Ddraig' is (roughly) pronounced 'Thraig' ('ai' rhymes with 'aye').
> 
> Here's hoping this is up to snuff!

            “Oh God, you’ve got to find it. If I can’t pay him, if any of you know something and you won’t speak, he’ll ruin us all, he will. Ruin us... or kill us where we stand.”

 

            At this, Sholto lets out a pathetic wail. John and Mary both wince at the sound.

 

            Sherlock is utterly unimpressed. “Captain Small,” he says; the bearded man looks surprised. Sherlock’s unimpressed-ness quickly devolves to disdain. “Oh, come off it, who else could you be? It’s obvious, just as it’s obvious that your thoughtless avarice was what got you into this mess in the first place. Predictable and shortsighted.”

 

            Small growls and starts to take a step toward the couch; John lets out a full-throated _snarl_ that stops him cold and wrings another squall from Sholto. Stepping around the couch, John grabs Small by the arm and forcibly seats him in an unoccupied chair. He bends to get face-to-face with the Captain and hisses, “ _Talk_.”

 

            “I did a favour in exchange for a favour,” Small croaks once he finds his voice. “Got involved in some bad business over in Iraq. Would have been dishonourably discharged were it not for my employer. A few phone calls and all was set to rights, just like that.” He tugs at his beard nervously and eyes John, who glares at him over folded arms and planted feet. “When I was redeployed to Afghanistan, my employer sent me with coordinates for treasure caches near the Pakistani border. I was to fetch a particular one, but the others were a reward for my help, he said. I showed it to Major Sholto, since I figured it’d be easier to split the load.”

 

            “You went for the others first,” Sherlock breathes, “and got caught.”

 

            Small gives a glum nod. “Major Sholto was clever with GPS units and metal detectors, said we could gather up the first two without trouble. Of course, as soon as we’d split the first two, he conveniently left for patrol the same day that Colonel Morstan bloke came calling with proof that we’d abandoned patrol to go dig up the treasures.” He shoots a glare at the desk, where all that is visible of Sholto is the shiny, bald top of his head, the thatch of red hair surrounding it, thin red eyebrows, and a few fingertips. Sholto vanishes under the desk again with a squeak. “I was back in England before the month was out, and now I’m pretty sure my boss wants me dead. You gotta do something. Fly it in from Afghanistan, if it’s still out there.”

 

            Sherlock steeples his fingers, frowns. “You’re sure that your employer couldn’t simply send another lackey instead of spending resources to punish you?”

 

            “On my life, I’m sure of it!” Small insists, nodding emphatically. “He’s got something big in the works, big enough that he doesn’t have time to find and pressure someone else. I’ve seen him do it before over a lot less.”

 

            “Big?”

 

            “Huge,” Small confirms. “Says everything he’s been doing for the past forty-some years has been leading up to this, or at least this stage of things.”

 

            Sherlock steeples his fingers and rests them against his lips. “I may know who this is, if he’s involved in something as momentous as you make it sound. Care to name your employer?”

 

            Anxious, Small plucks at his beard before speaking. “It’s Charles Augustus Milverton.”

 

            Sherlock goes rigid; his expression is thunderously black. “ _Milverton_ ,” he snarls, voice nearly subsonic and dripping with venom. “ _Him_ again.”

 

            The smile that abruptly breaks across Sherlock’s face is quite possibly one of the scariest things John has ever witnessed; it's less an expression of vicious glee and more a delightedly bloodthirsty baring of teeth. “I take it you know him,” John ventures, standing aside as Sherlock practically flings himself up out of the sofa. Mary looks to John, who shrugs and tips his head to indicate they should probably follow.

 

            “Know him! John, my dearest John, there is no one I would be happier to see locked away in the bowels of the dankest dungeon than Charles Augustus Milverton!” Sherlock crows. John blushes at the affectionate possessive; Sherlock seizes Small’s bicep in an iron grip. “You will accompany us to New Scotland Yard,” he says, dancing away and tugging the befuddled Captain along. “Milverton is to Moriarty as ego is to id, despite Moriarty’s advantage in intellect. Moriarty played games. Milverton is single-mindedly, viciously power-hungry. He is so rapaciously greedy, so devoid of empathy, that he inspires a shrinking, creeping feeling I only experienced once when I first witnessed a death by strychnine poisoning. Come, John, Mary!”

 

            “Where are you going?!” Sholto squalls from behind his desk. “Are you leaving!?”

 

            “We have your stalker in custody, your problem is solved, bye now!” Sherlock chirps as he exits the office, Small still in tow. “To the Yard! I have an entire file on activities I have suspected Milverton’s hand in! If there is a connection, I will find it!”

 

            Sholto gives Mary and John a wide-eyed look; they decide to simply depart and leave him to his hookah. They both heave enormous sighs of relief as they emerge from Sholto’s bizarre den of trinkets and the fug pervading it.

 

            It seems that Sherlock’s knack for cab summoning is as powerful as ever; he’s barely thrown his arm up at the kerb before a black cab rolls to a neat halt nearby. “New Scotland Yard, on the double!” he booms as he, Small, John, and Mary pile into the vehicle.

 

            John can see Sherlock practically vibrating with manic energy. He’s almost as giddy as he had been four years ago during A Study in Pink; this Milverton bloke must be as nasty and clever as they come to have Sherlock in such a frenzy. “Okay. How do you know Milverton, then?”

 

            “Career blackmailer, John, as the greedy Captain has told us,” Sherlock says. Small’s dirty look is ignored entirely. “I first encountered Milverton seven years ago, when I was still newly come to my Work. A high-level diplomat had stolen sensitive documents and sold them to Chinese agents before killing her boss, but none of it added up. I did some digging, and discovered that the diplomat had had a child in her late teens. The boy suffered from intense paranoia and became violent when he felt threatened, which was always; he’d ended up institutionalized after he’d put a classmate into a coma, convinced they were plotting his death. When I mentioned him to her, she told me that someone named Charles Augustus Milverton had threatened to reveal the boy and his disorder to her employers unless she performed the theft, sale, and hit. There was nothing to tie Milverton to the crime, however; all I had was her word.

 

            “Five months later, four hundred thousand pounds and a filing cabinet vanish, replaced with a trader specialising in mutual funds and his secretary, both dead of gunshots to the head. Using the secretary’s laptop, I examined the trader’s purchase and sale records and crunched the numbers—he had been running a moderately large-scale Ponzi scheme for nearly three years. Further searching turned up two emails wherein the trader attempted to get a friend’s help in escaping a very persistent visitor.”

 

            “Let me guess,” Mary drawls. “Milverton was the visitor?”

 

            Sherlock nods. “The very one, and yet there was no record, in house or even on CCTV, of anyone unusual visiting the office or the trader’s home. Time and time again, his machinations are present yet impossible to prove.”

 

            “He’s a slippery one, he is,” Small growls. He pulls at his beard; John’s starting to think the gesture is a nervous tic. “Knows the law inside and out, has all sorts of folk under his thumb. If he can’t bend the law or erase his tracks, he’ll force it with money or pressure. There’s no point in getting him to court when you’ll end up ruined, humiliated, or worse. Of course, that’s if you can even get him to court. Never leaves enough for even a warrant, does he.”

 

            Mary looks thoughtful. “No one’s completely invisible, though, and that kind of power always has a direction.” She smiles, but it’s a little bit like Sherlock’s earlier grin—there’s something sharp about it, something a bit dangerous. “You’re going to track him down and beat him at his own game, aren’t you?”

 

            Sherlock gives that eerie smile again and leans across the space between the seats. “The game, Mary, is on,” he rumbles. Green and glasz lock in a mutual moment of utter relish for the hunt.

 

            John’s heart gives a great _thump_ ; his mouth goes dry.

 

            “They’re bonkers!” Small huffs.

           

            They’re _beautiful_ , thinks John.

 

***

 

        “You needn’t worry about Lestrade’s reaction,” Sherlock says as he hands John the money for the driver. “I do believe my brother has already informed him.”

 

         John raises an eyebrow, surprised. “Lestrade’s met Mycroft?”

 

         Sherlock snorts (which translates to ‘obviously, John’, no doubt) and throws open the doors to the Yard. The officers in the atrium all do double takes as they glance up and then realise who they just looked at. John automatically positions himself a step behind and to Sherlock’s left; Mary takes Small’s arm and falls into step behind them.

 

         Total silence, slack jaws (the officers that recognise Sherlock), and confused stares (the cadets and various other individuals who aren’t quite so quick on the uptake) follow them all the way to the lifts. Under the weight of so many stares, John instinctively squares his shoulders and lifts his chin, matching Sherlock’s stride with a crisp, brisk march. No one challenges them, even while they’re waiting for a lift to arrive.

 

          When the lift doors shut, the giggles John had kept tightly repressed bubble free. Within moments, Sherlock’s low, rich chuckle joins in. “Like a school of bloody fish,” John splutters between breaths. It occurs to him that they haven’t encountered Anderson or Sally Donovan yet, and he breaks down into yet more giggles.

 

          “I imagine they won’t be best pleased,” Sherlock rumbles, clearly having cottoned on to John’s train of thought. “They’ll undoubtedly attempt to arrest the ‘psychopath freak’ for various unspeakable crimes against normalcy.” Mary shoots him a concerned look; he shrugs.

 

           John snorts. “Try and fail, you mean.” There’s no way Sherlock would be back without Mycroft carefully sewing up the fiddly legal bits, and John has no intention of allowing the usual harassment to take place, much less attempted arrests. His fingers flex in anticipation.

 

           The lift judders to a halt and the doors slide open. “Oh,” says Mary. “There’s a dragon here.”

 

           Sherlock perks up immediately. “A dragon? Wouldn’t we see it? How can you tell?” He cranes his neck to look over the Homicide division floor, eyes flicking from person to visible person.

 

            Mary taps her nose. “It’s the scent. Can’t quite describe it, other than ‘dragonish’.” She smiles when John nods—he’s always detected something unusual about the Homicide offices, but he’d reckoned it was something about the carpet or the ductwork. After a few more delicate sniffs, Mary nods. “Greater dragon. A stag, too.”

 

            Sherlock gives up his dragon hunt with a huff when no winged reptiles make themselves apparent and sets off, strolling between cubicles like he owns the entire floor. Silence blooms in his wake, followed by frantic whispers and mutters. John sees Sally Donovan sitting utterly dumbstruck at one cubicle; when she meets his gaze, he gives her a shake of the head and a forbidding glare.

 

            “Who is that?” asks Mary; apparently the tacit exchange hadn’t gone unnoticed. “She’s coming ov-”

 

            “Oi! Freak!”

 

            “Sally.” Sherlock performs an abrupt about-face; Mary, too, spins on her heel. She squares her shoulders and steps into Donovan’s path when she attempts to bully past.

 

            “You’ve got some nerve, showing up here, you bloody monster!” Sally snarls, aggressively jabbing a finger at Sherlock over Mary’s shoulder. “Expected to be welcomed back like some sort of risen martyr, did you? We’ve enough to put you away for years on fraud alone, you sick son of-”

 

            “ _That is enough_ ,” Mary barks. John and Captain Small jump to attention before they even realise they’ve moved; Sally rears back like a startled cat. Mary presses the advantage and gets Sally to retreat several steps before she recovers her balance. “I do not care about ‘he said, she said’. _You. Do. Not. Talk. To. People. That. Way_.” She bites out each word with razor-edged diction. “I shouldn’t have to explain this to you; even my little first years know it.”

 

            “But he-”

 

            Mary does her concertmaster’s ‘cut’ gesture again, severing Sally’s protest as neatly as flipping a switch. “What did I say I didn’t care about?”

 

            When Sally responds with a dismissive sneer, Mary turns her head a fraction and gives her a sidelong, malachite _glare_ that would have made John’s old commanding officers wilt like daisies. “He said, she said,” Sally mumbles, sullen.

 

            “Precisely. Regardless of what he’s done in the past, you are categorically _not justified_ in harassing, slandering, or hurting him in retaliation, just like he’s not justified in tormenting you. End of conversation.” With an about-face that would have induced tears of joy in even the nastiest drill sergeant, Mary spreads her arms and chivvies a bewildered John, Captain Small, and Sherlock to the door where a tired-looking man with silver hair is waiting. She pauses once she gets close, then sighs and shakes her head. “I know she’s one of yours, drake, but she attacked one of mine. Fair’s fair.”

 

            Lestrade just raises an eyebrow. “You weren’t out of place, sphinx. I reckon I can make an exception,” he concedes with a shrug. Mary acknowledges that he’s well aware of what she is with a nod. She smiles her thanks when he pulls out a chair for her. Lestrade turns to Small. “Now, you. How’d you get tangled up with this lot?” He jerks a thumb at John and Sherlock, who are bent together over one of Sherlock’s old pet cases, cheeks nearly touching as they read and mutter back and forth.

 

            Small raises his hands and shoulders in a baffled, ‘I’m stuck on this ride, how do I get out’ sort of gesture. “I asked for help,” he says, and Mary gets the sense that that’s about all that needs to be said, because Lestrade lets out a longsuffering sigh and plunks back into the chair behind his desk.

 

            “Oi, you two, does this poor sod need to be here?”

 

            There’s an eloquent (if inelegant) snort from Sherlock. He doesn’t even raise his eyes from the contents of the file. “He’s received death threats that we believe are very serious indeed,” he rumbles, as if it’s obvious. “Best not to leave him elsewhere.”

 

            Rolling his eyes, Lestrade motions to the other chairs and to the door. “Break room’s just on the other side of the lifts. Help yourself.” He flashes Mary a knowing smirk when the Captain makes his escape posthaste. “These two have been right terrors, haven’t they? God, never thought I’d miss seeing that ‘help me’ face on anyone.”

 

            Mary returns the wry smile. She suspects she’s been a bit of a terror herself, but she’s got four days left before the start of the term. All her prep work was done weeks ago, so she’s going to play a bit before she has to go back to life as Miss Morstan, first-year schoolteacher.

 

            Not that Sherlock and John seem terribly different from her students at times, she thinks as she watches Sherlock appropriate a roll of tape and one of Lestrade’s walls. “You’re surprisingly lenient about them using your territory like that,” she remarks. Most dragons would at least be raising a fuss if someone barged in and started sticking tape all over one wall of their shiny glass office.

 

            “Meh,” Lestrade says with a shrug. “People don’t call us silvers ‘overgrown sheepdogs’ for nothing. We collect more people than we do bits and bobs.” He gazes out of the exterior windows at the city lights. “Me? I collected London.”

 

            Sherlock is staring at Lestrade searchingly. “You’re the dragon.” At that, John looks up, startled but not really shocked.

 

            “That I am,” Lestrade responds mildly. “John finally let you in on everything?”

 

            “More like he let himself in and I nearly mauled him before I realised who he was,” John says from where he’s taping more papers to the wall. “So you’re a dragon, then? Explains that scent.”

 

            Still perplexed, Sherlock shakes his head. “You’re... human. I thought dragons were much larger?”

 

            That gets a boyish grin from Lestrade. He lifts one foot and _steps_ ; even sitting, just dropping his foot makes the floor shake. Sherlock stares at the DI in disbelief. “It’s all how you fold it up,” Lestrade chuckles. “I went through furniture and tile floors like mad before I finally sorted out how to make suspensor charms permanent.”

 

            Sherlock appears to have reached his ‘too much supernatural stuff at once’ threshold; he rejoins John at the wall and starts scouring the posted pages. Lestrade just keeps smiling. He’s enjoying being the one to baffle Sherlock Holmes for once.

 

***

 

            John and Sherlock have taken down all the papers from the file (each page details a case in which Milverton had been implicated but never pursued or charged due to lack of substantial evidence or people willing to press charges) for the third or fourth time when there’s a knock at Lestrade’s door.

 

            Lestrade goes rigid and tight-lipped with fury as a tall, somewhat overweight, auburn-haired man in a mauve suit steps into the office. “Gregory,” the man croons in a supercilious, oily-smooth tenor. “So very good to see you with such interesting... friends.” His eyes flick over John and Mary, then come to rest on Sherlock. “Goodness, how very interesting.”

 

            Mary, too, has gone totally still and quiet. The man’s scent is overwhelmingly magical, but underneath the icy, crackling layer of powerful spellwork, there’s the wet-stone-and-reptile funk that’s unique to knuckers. She glances at John and Sherlock—John’s bristling and standing protectively at Sherlock’s side, but Sherlock is staring in open shock.

 

            “What do you want?” Lestrade snaps. “You came here for me, so talk to me.”

 

            Mauve Suit takes his time shifting his attention from Sherlock to Lestrade.  “I did indeed, how good of you to remind me.” Ersatz gratitude drips from his tone. “I was simply wondering how we are doing, Gregory. The thousandth day has long since come and gone.”

 

            If Mary had thought the DI was furious before, she was entirely mistaken. Silvery scales ripple in and out of existence over his knuckles and forearms; ivory claws dig furrows into the plastic armrests of his chair. “We. Are. Fffine,” he rumbles threateningly, his pleasant tenor suddenly dropping into a gravelly, sibilant basso.

 

            Mauve Suit makes a face of gentle disappointment, like a dog owner whose pet just left a mess. “And?” he purrs.

 

            “Two to three weeks,” Lestrade snarls.

 

            “All good?”

 

            One of the arms of Lestrade’s chair groans and gives way with a snap. He tosses it aside; it lodges itself in the side of his file cabinet with a bang. “Yes,” he bites, as if it pains him to say so.

           

            Mauve Suit smiles, but it’s a nasty thing—it doesn’t reach past the corners of his mouth. “Wonderful, simply wonderful.” He turns to regard Sherlock again. “I shall have to inform dear Gwydderig of this,” he purrs. “He’ll be _dreadfully_ intrigued to know he’s done so very _well._ ” He offers his hand to Sherlock. “You may call me Ddraig.”

 

            Mary’s heart feels like it’s making a genuine effort to escape her chest. Ddraig. He can only be Ddraig of Lyminster. She glances to Lestrade, who looks about three seconds from vaulting his desk and tearing into the mauve-suited viper in his office. What on Earth could Ddraig of Lyminster want from a DI, dragon or otherwise? Why was he so interested in Sherlock?

 

            John meets Mary’s eyes; she hopes her face conveys all the worry and foreboding she’s feeling. Whatever’s going on, it’s the worst sort of unpleasant.

 

            Sherlock gives Ddraig a searching, skeptical look. “You are wearing my brother’s face. Explain.” he demands, completely ignoring the offered hand.

 

            Ddraig’s smile is positively crocodilian. “From whom do you think your brother received his features, clever little phouka?” Mary sucks in a startled breath. Ddraig’s smile widens; he turns so he’s half-facing Lestrade again. “Such winning charisma is very much a family affair; I closely resemble my own sire, and my sire, his. It will undoubtedly continue down the line, much as it has for generations.”

 

            “ _Piss off,_ ” Lestrade snarls.

 

            Sherlock frowns. “My brother and I have never met our father.”

 

            “Incorrect in all ways,” Ddraig trills lowly. It’s singularly creepy. Something about the bizarre singsong must get to John, because the deep, rolling growl he’s been keeping to a muted buzz since Ddraig first looked at Sherlock grows to fill the whole office. Ddraig looks faintly annoyed. “Oh goodness. Dear little pussy cat has his hackles up.” When he moves one hand in a languid half-circle, John feels something intangible yet greasy attempt to _shut off_ his growl. He shakes his head and the unpleasant sensation loses its grip, sliding away.

 

            Mary’s eyes go wide. For a split second, Ddraig looks just as startled. “You heard him. _Get out_ ,” John grates. His rumbling continues unabated.

 

            Ddraig gives John a closer look. He doesn’t seem to find whatever it was he was looking for. Well, that or he doesn’t like what he sees, because he draws back and steps away as if repulsed. “Vermin, all three of you, even if the phouka is amusing. Cause any further problems, and I’ll see you dealt with as is appropriate. Gregory, we shall speak again. Do send my congratulations to Mycroft.” With that, he turns on his heel and departs.

 

            Mary lets out the breath she hadn’t realised she had been holding. Lestrade snarls out a curse and wrenches the other arm of his chair clean off; it joins its mate in the side of the filing cabinet with a violent flick of his wrist. He buries his face in his arms on his desk and doesn’t speak, but his shuddering breaths make his emotional state all too clear.

 

            The door to the office opens again; Small slides in and shuts it behind him. Even through his deep tan, the man’s pale as a ghost. “Oh God,” he gasps. “My boss. My boss was just here. Tell me he wasn’t looking for me!”

 

            Sherlock, John and Mary all look at each other, wide eyed.

 

            “Bloody, buggering fuck,” Mary groans.

 

***

 

            Lestrade is scribbling in paint pen on the inside of a conference room door frame; Mary and Sherlock watch like hawks while John and Captain Small look on in wary bafflement.

 

            “Right. So,” Greg says at length, capping the pen and clapping his hands together in front of him. The space in the doorframe ripples and shudders, then changes—there’s a watery view of some sort of small, cosy room. “You. Captain Smith or whatever. C’mere.” Small obeys, standing before the watery doorway with a dubious expression. “This is a one-way door to an Other London safehouse; my older sister runs them, and she’s one of the strongest ward-mages in Europe. You’ll be safe there.”

 

            Small eyes the portal resignedly. “I’m too bloody old for this rubbish,” he grumbles. “Ruddy Stargate in the door, my boss is some kind of dragon, copper’s a dragon... you say this is the best option?”

 

            Lestrade nods. Small groans, but squares his shoulders and steps through the portal anyway. As soon as he’s through, the rippling effect snaps out of existence with a crack and a stink of burnt paint pen ink. The scribbles in the doorframe have vanished.

 

            “Right. Now that we’ve got that poor sod somewhere else, we can talk.” Greg throws himself down opposite Mary, John and Sherlock. “I’m warning you now, this isn’t going to be an easy conversation.”

 

            Sherlock sniffs. “Try me,” he snarks. “Maybe parting with some bauble from your hoard to pay the price for an ill-thought-out bargain is difficult for you, being a dragon and all, but this hardly merits such dramatic pronouncements. Hard conversation, indeed.”

 

            Greg gives Sherlock a flat, cold glare. “Don’t mind if I do. You’re _literally_ not human, Sherlock.” John and Mary both wince; Sherlock’s jaw drops. “Not tough enough to swallow? Your brother paid for half of the spell that’s keeping—sorry, that _was_ keeping you human by giving up all of his magic but the bit needed to let him take his natural shape.” He sits back and crosses his arms, regarding a stunned Sherlock defiantly.

 

            Sherlock feels as if he’s been punched in the gut.

 

            Not human.

 

            He’s not human.

 

            He sits there with those three words dancing manic circles in his mind’s eye.

 

            Thirty years of certainty. Thirty years spent believing he knew exactly what he was, what made him the way he was, and what he would grow to be. Thirty years of evaluating himself for observational bias, for internalised prejudices and fears and opinions that could potentially corrupt the data he took in. 

 

            Thirty years, overturned by the alteration of one fact. He slumps in his seat.

 

            Suddenly, John and Mary are next to him. “Hey. Hey, get out of your head,” John chides, leaning in. “Listen. The only thing that’s changed is your understanding of you.”

 

            “It’s just re-naming a variable, not altering its value,” adds Mary, astutely cutting to the heart of the matter.

 

            Sherlock sits there for a moment, still processing. Accepting the existence of the supernatural is one thing; accepting that one _is_ supernatural is entirely another. Why would Mycroft do such a thing? Why would he try to keep Sherlock human when being human had brought him so much misery? “Why?” he asks, genuinely confused. “Why would he do that?”

 

            Greg’s expression falls. He looks sad, tired.

 

            “At your sixth birthday party, you told him you were considering opening up your chest and excising whatever it was that felt hollow in there,” Lestrade says quietly. “You said you’d come to the conclusion that, whatever that hollow thing was, it was what was making you different than the other kids.” He shakes his head slowly. “When your baby brother-- your beautiful, intelligent, _one-of-a-kind_ baby brother—talks about cutting himself open just so he can fit in, you do everything you can to make sure there’s as little as possible to differentiate him from others. Mycroft was terrified you would hurt yourself if you ever matured into your heritage.”

 

            In the long quiet that follows, John and Mary both put a hand on one of Sherlock’s.

 

            Sherlock is floored—he’d forgotten about that party and telling Mycroft about the hollow sensation. He remembers that Mycroft had looked alarmed by the confession, but he hadn’t thought it was anything other than detached concern. Mycroft had been omnipresent, not warm or expressive. Hearing that he’d actually been concerned... terrified, even... it’s a bit of a shift of perspective.

 

            Some part of him is irritated by Mycroft’s meddling, but another part of him grudgingly acknowledges that Mycroft had evidently done his best to do what Sherlock wanted. Yet another part is turning the new information over and attempting to fit it into his understanding of Ddraig/Milverton’s machinations. “You said he paid for half of the spell by giving up his magic. What was the other half?”

 

            Lestrade blanches and grits his teeth. “It was a joint price,” he grits out. “My father promised my obedience on any one task to Ddraig. Slimy git had me provide DNA for some sort of experiment he’s been carrying out. He asked the same of Mycroft about eight years ago. It wasn’t until three years ago that we learned what he was up to.” He shifts in his seat uncomfortably. “Mycroft called me; apparently Ddraig had shown up with a crate full of dragon’s eggs and a threat to frame him for leaking state secrets to Iran and North Korea unless Mycroft minded them until they hatched.”

 

            John curses; Sherlock pales.

 

            “They’re yours, aren’t they?” Mary sighs.

 

            Nodding, Lestrade buries his face in his hands. “Only clutch that made it to term, of course, and the surrogate died after laying,” he groans. “Not that that matters. Ddraig’s as influential in dragon political circles as he is in human ones; he leads a supremacist movement that’s been gathering steam amongst traditionalists. She’s practically a martyr.”

 

            “So... why the DNA and eggs?” John asks, feeling as if he’s missing something. It seems like a lot of effort to go to for such uncertain gains.

 

            “Supremacist, John,” Sherlock says flatly. “Eugenics—breeding a master race of dragons, or some such nonsense.” It hardly needs saying that a potential master race of _dragons_ is a bit of a frightening idea.

 

            It seems Sherlock has the right of it; Lestrade is nodding. “He’ll be taking them as soon as they hatch,” he growls. “I know Mycroft and I didn’t ask for them, but after three years of guarding that nest, I’ll be damned if he snatches up my kids just so he can turn them into a bloody cult.” He punctuates that with a slam of his fist on the table. “They’re _children,_ not pawns for brainwashing!”

 

            Sherlock leans forward, steepling his fingers. John can almost see it as his analytical mind snaps into gear and hits the ground running. “Contingencies first. Where will he take them once they hatch?”

 

            “He’s got a house in Hampstead,” Lestrade replies, “overlooking the swimming ponds. Probably has a lair somewhere beneath one of them.”

 

            Nodding, Sherlock taps his fingertips against his chin and lips thoughtfully. “Very posh, suits his Milverton identity.” Tapping his fingertips again, he scowls and shakes his head. “No, no, Homeless Network won’t do here. We’ll have to monitor the CCTV to get a better sense of his movements. You said ‘clutch’, so he’ll be preparing for more than just one infant; keylogger and browser history would be appropriate for predicting dates of supply shipments and such.”

 

            “You could always find an in with... with...” Mary starts, stifling a yawn midway through her sentence. “Find an in with the staff. Humans are cheap, easily-manipulated labour; his prejudices might blind him to what his human staff does.”

 

            Seeing Mary’s yawn, John checks his wristwatch and goggles at the time—it’s nearly midnight already. “Jesus. I should have been in bed two hours ago,” he mutters. “Mary, should we get you a cab home?”

 

            Mary watches Sherlock cogitate for a moment, then looks back at John. “It depends on what Sherlock wants,” she says. “You said earlier today that you’re very new to the wider magical world. I’m sure you’re both resourceful, but a lot of the material online is intended to be misleading. If Sherlock wants me to talk him through his heritage, I’m more than willing to do so.” She smiles at John fondly. “That is, of course, if you don’t mind, John—you look tired, and I don’t want to keep you from home.”

 

            “Of course you won’t,” Sherlock interjects absently, waving one hand. “I would prefer it if you would accompany us to Baker Street, in fact, so you won’t be keeping John long at all. I don’t intend to sleep; you may occupy my bed.” Ignoring Mary’s raised eyebrow and John’s eye roll, he places his hands on the table and stands in one graceful movement. “Going by your visible exhaustion, Lestrade, you’ve obviously taken earlier shifts so to relieve my broody hen of a brother of his duties during the late night; if you are not late, you soon will be.”

 

            A reminiscent half-smile flits across Lestrade’s face. “Never thought I’d be glad to be picked apart again,” he jokes, getting to his feet as well. “I trust you to work this one out, Sherlock. It... it’d mean the world to me. And thank you, too. For the... jumping and all that.”

 

            Sherlock sniffs, but his expression is just warm enough that it’s clear he’s pleased. “How very saccharine,” he drawls. “Do stop it; you’re making my teeth hurt.”

 

            Lestrade grins.

 

            ***

           

            John heads for the kitchen as soon as they arrive back at 221B, digging out the stovetop kettle from a cabinet. There’s tea in a canister in another cabinet; it doesn’t smell stale or altered, so he sets out three mugs and places a tea bag in each.

 

            Sherlock deposits the Milverton file on the coffee table, pulls a small, leatherbound notebook from a bookshelf, and perches in his squashy grey chair. “Mary.”

 

            Mary, who had been examining the skull on the mantle, turns and regards him with a smile. “Yes?”

 

            “You implied that you know what I am,” Sherlock says. The notebook is open atop his knees and he’s got a pen poised over the page. “You mentioned this morning that several species besides sphinxes and dragons possess ‘natural magic’ that grows as they age. I take it I am one of those species, since I began life phenotypically human?”

 

            Smiling, Mary nods. “Yes, you are.” She settles in John’s chair, tucking her legs sideways in the seat and resting both forearms on one armrest. There’s something very catlike about it; having thought that, Sherlock remembers _what_ he’s looking at and realises that she’s sitting in the same position she would be were she in her natural form. He files away the tell and makes a mental note to look for others. “You’re in the fey family, genus Versimorphus, species Phouka; more likely subspecies Cambria than Hibernia. The common name is ‘phouka’ or ‘pwca’, depending on the locality.”

 

            “Oh,” says John, “I think my grandda told us stories about pwca once.” He looks worried. “Grandda made them sound rather malicious.”

 

            Sherlock purses his lips in displeasure; Mary tilts her head from side to side in a ‘sort of’ gesture. “They’re a handful, phouka, but they’re not malicious by nature. The stories remember them that way because those were the ones who caused enough trouble to actually be memorable.” She smiles reassuringly, which seems to set Sherlock at ease a bit. “Back when those stories were first told, phouka didn’t have much to do beyond bother the local humans to see what they did. They’re like some of my favourite students—insatiably curious and passionate about their interests, but God save you if they haven’t got anything to put their brains to.”

 

            “Sounds familiar,” John notes cheekily as he brings Mary and Sherlock their tea; he sets his on the floor next to his chair, retreats to the loo, and returns in his natural shape a moment later. He settles on the floor and curls a paw around his mug. When Mary is quiet for a bit longer than expected, he twists to look up at her and catches her staring at his wings.

 

            Sherlock rolls his eyes as John flexes his wings unsubtly and Mary blushes. “You were saying?” he calls.

 

            “Er, yes, I... phouka. Right. Very clever, very curious, but not malicious by nature,” Mary says in a rush. She gathers herself a little bit, then continues. “They’re shapeshifters, highly adept ones—the oldest phouka can change their mass just as easily as they change their shapes, and even the youngest phouka can shift into virtually anything they can imag—oh.”

 

            Sherlock has suddenly become a taller, dark-haired, silver-eyed version of John’s human form.

 

            John grimaces. “Christ, Sherlock. I look terrible like that, stop it.”

 

            Sherlock springs from his perch and stands at the mantel, examining himself in the mirror. “Amazing,” he breathes, poking at his (John’s?) face experimentally. He picks at his hair; after a moment of concentration, the dark brown fades to an ashy gold. The odd silver eyes remain stubborn, but Sherlock’s smiling like a madman. “Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.” He bolts from the room for the loo and slams the door.

 

            John looks up at Mary. “Took that better than I expected,” he says. Mary nods.

 

            The loo bangs open again. Sherlock trots out in a sphinx shape, all ebony feathers and sleek onyx fur. He’s like a shadow with an ivory face. “This is unbelievable,” he says in wonder as he trots and then canters around the room. “Incredibly useful. John, Mary, I do believe I know how we’re going to gather intelligence on the vile Mr Milverton.” He spreads his wings halfway and nearly knocks over a lamp before folding them back up again. The sound of paws on wood changes to the sound of claws on wood as he shifts while moving; now there are obsidian scales glinting in the lamplight over a sinewy, distinctly draconic body as leathery, batlike wings furl and unfurl. “I need a laptop. Do either of you have a laptop?” He stops walking, runs for his room. A moment later he’s back and in his human form, clad in his pajamas and clutching his laptop.

 

            Watching as Sherlock throws himself down on the couch and starts clattering away at the keyboard, John asks, “How _are_ we going to do it?” He’s got a sneaking feeling that whatever Sherlock’s plan is, it’s going to be ridiculous, overcomplicated, and dangero-

 

            “Aha!” Sherlock crows triumphantly. He spins the laptop to show a ‘help wanted’ ad for a housemaid on Craigslist, posted by a C. A. Milverton. “We’ll get an in with the staff by _joining the staff_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for terrible Latin, inevitable mangling of folklore and canon stories, suits in dreadful colours, fictional supremacists, and fictional eugenics experiments. 
> 
> 'Pwca' is pronounced 'poo-ka'. 'Gwydderig' is (roughly) pronounced 'gooee-there-rig'. If you're versed in Welsh and I'm wrong, let me know. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading. :)


	8. how neatly spreads his claws

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. I'm so sorry I'm so late with this! I moved out of my old flat the week after posting the seventh chapter, moved into the new one two weeks later, and this is the first time in all that time that I've had internet. I haven't even ordered my textbooks for my classes yet, and they start this Monday.
> 
> Also, I'm fairly certain my upstairs neighbours have a herd of dinosaurs. I haven't seen it, but I keep hearing it, and I am *burning* with curiosity. I'll have to ask them about it sometime.
> 
> Edited fairly extensively, but do let me know if there are any errors I missed.

            “Join the staff?” John echoes, raising an eyebrow. “He wants a housemaid, Sherlock.”

 

            Sherlock nods. “I don’t see why it wouldn’t work,” he says eagerly. “I’d volunteer to take the job—I could certainly play the role well—but Ddraig was a bit too interested in me. I suspect he would be able to pick me out if I were present in the building too often. No, what I need to do is find an excuse to get into the house briefly. To do that, we first need to plant someone in the household.”

 

            Mary perks up even as John groans and shakes his head. “Sherlock, Mary’s got work soon! School starts next week, I think.”

 

            “And I’ve had all of my preparation done for weeks, like I do every year,” Mary responds, reaching down to pat one of John’s wings reassuringly. Her hand lingers for a moment.

 

            John still looks doubtful. “He saw you, though, didn’t he?”

 

            Mary shrugs. “Yes, but unlike you and Sherlock, John, I’m not a natural shapeshifter. My human form’s something I had to write into a spell myself. I can edit it to change my face as well as my height, proportions, apparent age, and even scent.” She looks to Sherlock. “I’ll do it.”

 

            Sherlock beams. “Magnificent. Now, listen closely—this is what I have in mind...”

 

            ***

 

            Mary steps back from the door after knocking, clasping her hands demurely in front of her. When Ddraig himself throws it open abruptly a few moments later, she can’t help flinching a little. She looks up at him and offers a tremulous smile. “I s-saw your advertisement on Craigslist. Y-you needed a house... a housemaid?” she asks. Her character is shy, submissive, and soft-spoken, so the flinch isn’t too out-of-character. Completely unlike Mary herself, but she’s always enjoyed playing roles and acting. Staying in character shouldn’t be difficult.

 

            Ddraig nods curtly and steps aside, beckoning her in. “Finally. Provided you begin immediately and speak not a word of what you see in this house to anyone, I can pay you fifty pounds per hour of work for eight hours each day, starting today,” he says, sounding harried. “I... my dear wife is expecting, and I cannot make heads or tails of all of the materials necessary for our children. My other staff are busy with their own duties, and so we are very much in need of your help.” He’s clearly lying through his teeth, but Mary’s character isn’t one to question or even appear to question. She merely makes an appropriately awed face at the money offered and asks what needs to be done.

 

            Mary finds herself with a lengthy to-do list. There are three bunk beds to be constructed, walls to be painted, a remodeled bathroom to decorate, floors to be hoovered, and a dozen other small, around-the-house tasks. Ddraig is evidently not keen on attending to the mundane aspects of life.

 

            Sherlock’s predictions are spot-on thus far. Ddraig’s ill-concealed haste in hiring Mary, the ludicrously exorbitant pay, even the completely inappropriate equipment (seriously, bunk beds? For infants?) are all completely in line with what the detective had explained last night. Ddraig is preparing for the dragonets, but it’s sloppy and poorly informed—he’s so busy with the larger, long-term machinations of his plans that he’s neglecting the smaller, short-term details.

 

            Now that she’s gotten into the household, Mary’s task is to ‘find’ some sort of plumbing or electrical problem. Ddraig will likely delegate the task of hiring the appropriate repairperson to her, whereupon she’ll call in Sherlock. He’ll be in disguise, but the goal is to get him into the house so he can attempt to locate some sort of proof of Ddraig’s machinations. The longer they can keep Ddraig tangled up with the police, the longer they’ll have to find some sort of weakness. Since even tricky repairs won’t buy them more than two to three days to discover conclusive evidence, Sherlock has plotted an elaborate whirlwind romance between ‘Simon’ the plumber/electrician and ‘Maggie’ the housemaid.

 

            Mary chuckles to herself as she bolts together bunk frames. John had not liked that ‘romance’ bit; so far as she knows, he’s still in something of a snit over it. He’d protested about safety and taking things unnecessarily far, but it had been pretty evident to both Mary and Sherlock that John was _jealous_.

 

            She’s got no idea who John is jealous of (in fact, she’s not sure if _John_ knows who he’s jealous of), but still—she is _tickled pink_ by his reaction. 

 

            Twenty-four hours into knowing Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, Mary feels like she’s been captured in orbit around the two of them. She’s perfectly all right with it, too, to be honest—they’re fantastic people, the both of them, and the chemistry between them is electrifying. There’s no doubt that they each have their own sets of issues (not to mention some joint ones, namely Sherlock’s faked suicide—there’s no way that’s fully resolved), but there’s also no doubt in her mind that the rest of the package makes those issues entirely worth dealing with. Sherlock is refreshingly frank, utterly genius, and _passionate_ about his work and his interests. John is steady, pragmatic, and highly intelligent in his own right (something that she imagines often gets overlooked with Sherlock’s sheer brilliance in such close proximity). Maybe it’s silly to be so sure of something so quickly, but she’s always been a good judge of character, and her instincts are telling her that this is a good, good thing she’s found.

 

            That John’s natural form is absolutely _gorgeous_ is a very happy bonus indeed. Thoughts of handsome ochre-and-umber wings and blue eyes handily float her through the most tedious parts of the day.

 

            ***

 

            Sherlock meets Mary just outside the West Hampstead tube station after her workday ends. He’s altered his face and changed his hair colour, but the big coat with its red buttonholes is unmistakeable. “Did you do it?” he demands as they make their way to the ticket machine.

 

            “I did,” Mary replies easily, fishing her Oyster card from her bag and purchasing a pair of tickets. She hands Sherlock his ticket and they make their way to the waiting room. “Leaky faucets in the kids’ bathroom—bloke who put them in must have been dreadfully careless.”

 

            Sherlock chuckles at her dry tone. “Very.” They sit together, shoulder to shoulder (or Mary’s shoulder to Sherlock’s arm, to be more precise). “I... I have been told to ask you one more time if you are comfortable with the long-term contingency plan. It may require us to engage in osculation for verisimilitude, and John was very insistent that I be certain you are not doing this out of a sense of obligation.”

 

            The words spill from Sherlock’s lips in such a tumble that Mary has to take a moment to parse what he’s just said. When she does sort it out, she can’t help laughing. “Oh, Sherlock. We’re going to have to work on your sweet talk, aren’t we? Osculation, really?” She elbows him playfully; he gives her a half-hearted glare. “It’s all fine; really, it is.” When he looks a little surprised at that, she chuckles. “I’m a grown woman, and I can make my own decisions. I’m not bad at defending myself, either; Ddraig’s scary, but I’m a damn sight more agile than he is in the air.”

 

            Sherlock looks thoughtful. The train arrives while he’s still thinking; Mary has to tug him along to get them on in time. The seats are all taken, so she finds them a relatively clear spot and directs Sherlock’s arm to one of the canary yellow overhead handrails. She grabs onto his coat as the train pulls out of the station.

 

            “John is attracted to you,” Sherlock says suddenly, troubled.

 

            Mary smiles, but that’s all—given Sherlock’s tone, it’d probably be a bit mean to be any more open with her pleasure at that pronouncement. “I find him attractive, too. Very attractive.” She looks up and meets Sherlock’s gaze; he’s trying to seem blank, but she can read a bit of sadness under it. “Is... that a problem?”

 

            “You are eminently acceptable when compared to the other women he’s courted in the past,” Sherlock rumbles. When Mary keeps watching him, he shifts his gaze away and looks at the other commuters in the car. “I... am very fond of John. When he is happy, I am pleased.”

 

            “But...?” Mary ventures, because there’s clearly something not being said here.

 

            Sherlock’s eyes flicker from person to person, then to the speakers in the ceiling when the conductor announces their arrival at Finchley Road station. When he responds, his voice is low, quiet, and flat. “For three years, I crossed names from a list and counted the days.” He shakes his head slowly. “I wish to never count days again.”

 

            Mary is perplexed at first. What could a hypothetical relationship between her and John have to do with counting... oh. “Sometimes it works out,” she muses aloud. He thinks they’re compatible, and he expects to count the days until Mary sweeps John away to a house, a dog, and one point seven children.

 

            He expects to be left alone.

 

            “You think we’ll work together, John and I.”

 

            The brief, almost guilty glance Sherlock sends Mary’s way is all the confirmation she needs.

 

            “You love him, don’t you?”

 

            Sherlock closes his eyes. He doesn’t respond for a long time, long enough that Swiss Cottage station comes and goes before he speaks. “I don’t participate in intercourse,” he says quietly. Mary has to lean in just to hear him over the clatter of the train. “I am typically disinclined to physical demonstrations of affection, and while I suspect John may be an exception, I cannot be certain. If he isn’t, I’m certain that what I feel _isn’t_ the sort of love he wants.”

           

            Mary scoffs at that. “Bullshit.” When Sherlock gives her an angry, defensive look, she smiles reassuringly and rests her fingertips on his arm briefly, quellingly. “Easy. Ace is fine. I’m calling bullshit on that ‘it’s not what he wants’ rubbish—of course that’s the kind of love he wants! That’s the kind of love people sing songs and dream about, you silly git. All that other stuff—the cuddling, the kissing, the sex? Icing on the cake. Tasty icing, but still icing.”

 

            Sherlock doesn’t look convinced. “I have observed many courtships, and most begin with the ‘other stuff’ well before getting to the long-term love and loyalty,” he says. “Modern Western media and culture practically dictate that a relationship is not ‘consummated’ or ‘real’ without sex being involved somehow.”

 

            “Publicity scheme,” Mary responds disdainfully. “Sex scenes titillate and sexual tension, resolved or otherwise, hooks attention and conversation. It's just the proverbial carrot tied to the end of a long stick.” She shakes her head. “Love doesn’t require sex. A lot of people have libidos that need sating, sure, but sex is in no way a prerequisite for love, loyalty, or a healthy relationship. Don’t let telly or the idiots who watch it tell you otherwise.”

 

            Sherlock braces Mary with one hand as the train rolls to a halt at St. John’s Green. He offers a small, sad smile when she thanks him. “Regardless. You interest John. You are intelligent and you seem to tolerate me well enough. If you wish to court him, I will not stop you, provided that I be allowed to work with him, should he choose it.”

             

            Mary blinks. Tolerate. Allowed.

 

            Back at Scotland Yard, that Donovan woman hadn’t hesitated for even a second with her invective—she’d expected anything _but_ a challenge. _‘You were considering opening up your chest and excising whatever it was that felt hollow in there,’_ the DI had said. Now there’s Sherlock, using words like ‘tolerate’ and ‘allow’ while discussing how his friendship with and love for John might fit into John and Mary’s hypothetical relationship.

 

            Mary’s met people who default to such language before. They’re usually parents or students with histories of being bullied or abused—people so accustomed to being rejected, hurt, and isolated that it’s almost their baseline, as if that’s just how they fit into the world. Some of them simply accept it, submitting to a role they never deserved. Some of them know they deserve better and lash out bitterly, eye for an eye.

 

            Some craft armour out of arrogance, defensive acid, and isolation, knowing they deserve better but resigned to the reality that they are who they are and people are cruel to those they don’t (won’t, can’t) understand.

             

            “Relationships are a give and take,” Mary says gently but firmly, pausing as the conductor announces the Baker Street stop. “It should never be a case of ‘allowed’ or ‘not allowed’—there’s no trust or respect in controlling who your partner sees or doesn’t see. Without respect or trust, there’s no love.” That likely cuts both ways—Sherlock seems the sort to scare off John’s less ‘acceptable’ girlfriends—but he needs to know that she won’t keep John away if that’s his choice.

 

            “Ah,” Sherlock rumbles, looking at Mary closely. Whatever he sees, it’s not what he expected—he seems puzzled.

 

            Mary smiles. “As for ‘tolerating’ you,” she begins, reaching up to playfully tap the tip of Sherlock’s nose with one finger, “I think you need to re-evaluate the evidence. I rather like you. Now, get home. I’ll call you tomorrow for work.” She herds him to the doors just as the train comes to a halt.

 

            Sherlock disembarks looking thoroughly baffled.

 

            Mary smiles the whole way home to Bermondsey.

 

            ***

 

            John looks up as Sherlock shuffles into the flat. He’s got that glassed, thousand-yard gaze sort of look on his face that means he’s doing some serious thinking; whatever it is, he seems almost... lost, as if he’s found himself somewhere he wasn’t expecting to be. “Hey,” John calls. “Are you all right?” It occurs to him that Sherlock had gone to check in with Mary at the end of the first day working at Ddraig’s house. “Did something happen? Is Mary all right?”

 

            “Mary is fine,” Sherlock says absently, sitting in his chair and tucking his knees up under his chin. “Successful day. Went back to her flat.”

 

            John’s glad to hear that Mary is safe, but Sherlock still looks perplexed. “What’s got you all... thinky, then?”

 

            Sherlock gives John a brief look-over, his eyes lingering over John’s folded wings, and then looks away again. He doesn’t seem inclined to talk, so John leaves him to his musing and gets up to change, dress, and make tea.

 

            When John returns with mugs of tea in hand, Sherlock speaks up. “You have taken all of this very calmly,” he remarks quietly. “Why are you so... unperturbed?”

 

            John gives Sherlock an incredulous look. “You’ve learned that you’re some sort of shapeshifting faerie and that, for all intents and purposes, your brother the water-dragon and Greg Lestrade the some-kind-of-dragon are having a clutch of hybrid dragon babies, and you’re asking _me_ why I’m ‘unperturbed’?”

 

            Sherlock acknowledges the point with a nod even as he waves a hand in languid dismissal. “Given the choice between ‘obsessing over what can’t be changed’ and ‘getting over the initial shock, adapting, and surviving, succeeding, or winning’, I will choose the latter every... well, every time but one, and neither my species nor my brother’s unexpected brood are that exception.”

 

            There’s something meaningful being said somewhere in the subtext of that statement, though God knows where or what it is. “Emotional triage,” John says instead, because he has plenty (too much) experience with it. You really can’t afford to have emotional breakdowns when a quarter of your unit is riddled with filthy birdshot and rusty nails and only half of that quarter are screaming for help.           

 

            Maybe that’s why John isn’t really shaken. It’s been years since he’s had to deal with anything quite so horrific as the aftermath of a roadside bomb, but having experienced something like that, everything that’s happened really doesn’t seem all that overwhelming.

 

            Having experienced seeing his best friend leap to his death from the top of a building only to turn up three years later in his library, everything else seems underwhelming in comparison.

 

            When John looks up, Sherlock is watching him closely. He’s got that lost look on his face again. “Right,” John says, “you’re doing the face again.”

 

            There’s just a moment where Sherlock looks like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, but the expression is gone as quickly as it appeared. “Face? What face?” Sherlock twists to look at his reflection in the glass display case behind his chair. “It’s my face. I changed it back.”

 

            John rolls his eyes. “You know exactly what I meant. You got lost in your head again. What the hell did Mary say to you to get your knickers in such a twist?”

 

            Some sort of emotion roils over Sherlock’s face, but it’s lightning quick again and too complicated for John to parse. “Nothing of great import,” he replies. A long, quiet moment passes. “She finds you attractive.”

 

            John raises an eyebrow. Sherlock Holmes, stating the obvious; he’s either fishing for more data or genuinely at a loss. Then again, if this has to do with Mary and her finding John attractive, it’s entirely possible that both of those things are true. “I’m... not sure what you want me to say,” he says after a bit of thought.

 

            Sherlock snorts dismissively and rolls his eyes. “You were very insistent that I talk to her about the feigned romance contingency. I did so. In the process of informing me that she is neither made of glass nor naïve, she also made it clear that she would be receptive to any overtures, should you make them.”

 

            That doesn’t clarify a thing. John rests his chin on the knuckles of his right hand and regards Sherlock with a look as if to say, ‘and?’

 

            The strange, convoluted expression flickers over Sherlock’s face again. “She will make you happy.” He uncoils from his chair and strides soundlessly into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him quietly but firmly.

 

            Having seen it a second time, a word finally attaches itself to the convoluted expression: bleak.

 

            John blinks, sighs, and settles back in his armchair to think.

 

***

 

            Ddraig sends his butler to inspect the leaks. The butler, an older human man with a harried, tired expression that seems permanently pressed into his face, takes one look at the faucets and lets out a long, exasperated sigh. He fishes a small tablet phone out of his breast pocket and taps through a list. “Call a plumber. We have £500 to work with.” With that, he departs.

 

            Mary has to restrain herself from a giddy little dance once the butler is out of sight. Perfect! She grabs her mobile and calls John.

 

            An hour later, the butler returns with a short, ginger man in navy coveralls, heavy boots, and an overburdened tool belt. “Show him to the problem,” the butler sighs, just as Sherlock (because there’s no missing the way his gaze slices through everything) gives a little gasp and a stammer before saying, “H-hello! I’m Simon Escott, with Escott Repairs, I hope I can help you, mademoiselle!”

 

            Staying in character (shy, blushing, lots of keeping her gaze demurely lowered yet still stealing glances, and generally appearing to be shocked that someone’s noticed her) is _so fucking difficult_ when Sherlock Holmes—Mister Cool and Collected himself—is using terrible French and tripping over his own feet to shake Mary’s hand. It’s even harder when, as Sherlock takes Mary’s hand in his and places a brief kiss on her knuckles, the butler gives a despairing groan. “Lord, give me strength,” he mutters to himself before tugging Sherlock away from Mary. “You have a job to do, Mr Escott. Please do it.”

 

            Sherlock startles, looks up at the butler, and proceeds to give an apology so awkward and stumbling that the butler stops him halfway through and leaves.

 

            Mary has to press a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing aloud. Sherlock looks serious, but his eyes give away the smile he’s not showing. “Oh, that poor man,” Mary cackles as soon as the butler’s well out of earshot.

 

            “He did look rather discomfited,” Sherlock remarks smugly. He sweeps his gaze around the room, taking in the spartan bunk beds, the drab beige paint on the walls, and the cheap Ikea dressers still packed away in their boxes, awaiting construction. His expression is somewhere between dubious and relieved. “I don’t think bunk beds are appropriate for infants, regardless of species,” he drawls.

 

            “The paint’s depressing,” Mary agrees. She makes her way to the loo; Sherlock clatters along behind her. “The leaks are here and here.” She points out the obvious things—the cracked faucet in the sink, the loose handles and faucet in the tub—but also points out the less-apparent problem. With some complicated spellwork and force of will, she’s managed to burst a weakly welded join in the hot water line in the wall.

 

            Sherlock’s smile is wide and pleased. “Ah, yes. I’ll have to turn off the water main for that.”

 

            Mary nods. “That was the idea. It’ll get you downstairs. I also did a little extra with the cracked faucet.” She points underneath it, where the crack wraps around and down to the base of the fixture. Just barely visible, there’s a faint, simple drawing etched into the polished nickel; two simple whips emerge from a circle with a tangent line beneath it. It’s been split in half by the crack. Sherlock kneels to get a better look. “That's fairly easily repaired,” she says as she fishes around in her pockets until her fingers meet two small semicircles of metal. Withdrawing them, she shows Sherlock the halves of a nickel disc with the same drawing etched into its surface. “I can repair this with a word. The hieroglyph binds the two; what happens to one is reflected in the other.”

 

            “Oh,” Sherlock says, “so that’s what you mean by ‘sympathetic’. Stick a doll through the heart with a pin and a man drops dead; connect two superficially similar objects in some way, snap a nickel coin in two, and a nickel faucet cracks. Clever.”

 

            Mary hands Sherlock the halved disc and holds her tongue; as much as she wants to firmly disabuse him of the West’s obnoxious, demonised version of gris-gris magic, now is not the time for that lecture. She makes a mental note to attend to it at some point.

 

            Sherlock returns the halved disc. “So I’ll leave under the pretense of getting a replacement, but will instead scout out the layout of the house, somehow without being seen?”

 

            That’s Mary’s plan—she nods. “You’ll use this.” She takes off her necklace and shows him the charm at the end. In sealed, blown glass ringed by tiny cuneiform etchings, there’s water from the River Lethe, a pinch of fiddlehead fern spores, and a wad of gum arabic encasing the lens from a sphinx’s eye, willingly given. At least, that’s what she’s been told—no matter how long or hard she stares, she can never remember what the contents of the flattened little glass torus actually look like. Judging from the look of stymied perplexity that’s starting to build on Sherlock’s face, he’s experiencing the same issue. “Invisibility charm suspended in the strongest forget-me charm possible.”

 

            Sherlock wrinkles his nose in distaste. “Tell me that there are not more of these things running about London. Dealing with idiots using television crime procedurals to inform their cover-up attempts is obnoxious enough.” He gently prods the charm with one finger. “A charm that makes it impossible to remember what one has seen? Hateful.”

 

            Mary pats Sherlock’s head (this earns her a glare) and loops the charm about his neck. “So far as we know, this is one of about twenty worldwide. No one remembers where the River Lethe runs, and no one remembers how to actually gather the water, much less avoid the effects long enough to use it in a charm.”

 

            Sherlock plucks the charm from where it rests against his chest to delicately tip it this way and that as he examines it closely. Mary finds herself a bit transfixed—even in his disguised shape, the precision with which Sherlock uses his hands is mesmerising. “Are you certain you trust me with something so rare?”

 

Mary starts and blushes. “I... yes, of course. The cuneiform is an old unbreakability charm. It’s etched into the glass and every link of the chain.” Much as she’d love to watch Sherlock toy with the charm more, she removes it from his grasp and drops it under his shirt collar. “Keep it hidden. The forget-me is too localised whilst the charm itself is inactive; any magic-user with a whit of formal training will recognise the effect.”

 

            Unperturbed by his observations being cut short, Sherlock merely gives Mary a bit of a lingering look and then goes back to examining the bath faucets. “Assuming your charms are effective and all goes smoothly, we will have what we need in time for you to attend to your classroom.” His tone is quietly, vigorously confident, full of the restrained, anticipatory ebullience of a predator about to make a clean, decisive kill; Mary has to restrain a thrilled shiver. Such a voice should be illegal.

 

            “I’ll... leave you to it, then,” Mary says a bit shakily. She pouts and blushes when Sherlock gives her a knowing glance and a raised eyebrow. “You’re too smart not to know what your voice does to people; don’t you give me cheek!” Sherlock gives a single huff of laughter; she throws her hands up in mock exasperation. “You’re impossible, Sherlock Holmes. Do your repairs! I’ll be wrangling furniture in the bedroom.”

 

             The prospect of assembling two Ikea dressers isn’t enough to dampen Mary’s mood. Even after all her playful banter (something John had said he generally ignored or rejected), Sherlock’s smile, though small, had been genuine.

 

            It's a small victory, but few campaigns are won without them.

 

            ***

 

            When Sherlock has done all he can short of leaving for the ‘replacement’ faucet or opening up the wall to get at the burst line, he retrieves his set of picks from their pouch, secretes them in a pocket, and peers into the bedroom.

 

            Mary has managed to put one of the dressers together; the other stands half-built in the middle of the floor with Mary and the rest of the pieces sitting in front of it. She’s already looking up at him expectantly. “Ready?” she asks, smiling gamely.

 

            There’s affection in that smile. He’s not entirely surprised by it—when they aren’t the subjects of his analyses, a sizeable minority of people react to him initially with interest, enjoyment, or amusement—but it is interesting to see it sustained even after exposure to his typical on-case behaviour. In fact, her reactions have been surprisingly similar to John’s early responses. She isn’t quite as enthralled as John had been, but meeting Sherlock had been like psychological resuscitation for John. Mary had been stressed when they first met, but she had not been a wan, listless shade of herself.

 

            Nonetheless, Sherlock is enjoying watching her rise to the occasion. She’s proven surprisingly hardy and resourceful. He gives an equally game smile and replies, “Quite so.”

 

            Mary gets to her feet in one smooth movement (yet again, Sherlock is abruptly reminded that she is very much _not_ human) and reaches up to tug the glass charm out of his shirt. “First things first. To deactivate the charm, hold it by making a ring with your thumb and index finger and fitting it in the circle like a lens, then recite the three tunics of the human eye, interior to exterior. Retina; choroid, ciliary, iris; sclerotic, cornea. It doesn’t matter what language you recite them in, thankfully; my Sumerian is terrible.”

 

            Sherlock nods, grips the charm as instructed, and repeats the deactivation phrase. He can’t help noting that, when held in such a way, the charm looks rather like an open eye. Perhaps that’s a part of the symbolism involved in the magic?

 

            Pleased with his recitation, Mary nods. “Now, to activate it—hold it by pinching it in the center, between the pads of your thumb and index finger. Once you’ve done that, recite the following: ‘vitreous clouded, aqueous muddied, crystalline occluded’.”

 

            “This activates both the invisibility charm and the forget-me?” Sherlock queries. The keywords seem better suited to the invisibility rather than the forgetfulness.

           

            “It does,” Mary replies. “When she taught me how to use it, Grandmother said that the waters of the Lethe act like a filter, imbuing the invisibility charm with the forget-me. Being what they are, no one’s quite figured out why the waters work that way, but they do.” She gives a wry smile and chuckles. “My grandmother taught me the activation phrase before she taught me the deactivation phrase; she forgot I was there. Don't take the charm off while it’s active, by the way. If you stop touching it, you’ll forget it’s there and lose it.”

 

            Sherlock nods and commits that to memory. He would really rather not lose such a useful item. “Shall we tell the butler that a new faucet is required, then?”

 

            Mary grins. “We shall.”

 

            ***

 

            About an hour after the butler releases Sherlock to find a hardware store, the disguised detective returns with a cheery knock on the front door and a spring in his step as he climbs the stairs to the bedroom-in-progress, the butler close on his heels. He’s carrying a cardboard box that’s about the right size to hold a replacement faucet; Mary wonders what he’s managed to lift from Ddraig’s office. She remembers her role and blushes and shuffles her feet when Sherlock sweeps in and takes her hands in his. “Mademoiselle! I am returned with a replacement!” he declares proudly.

 

            The butler looks caught between mortification and incredulousness.

 

            Mortification wins when Sherlock goes to one knee and produces a rose from one of his pockets, offering it to a blushing (red-faced with restrained laughter, more like) Mary with all the gravitas and drama of a Shakespearean lothario. The butler turns on his heel and escapes posthaste; Mary crams a stifling hand against her mouth and nearly falls over laughing. She follows Sherlock as he goes back to the loo with the box.

 

            “Bless you, Sherlock Holmes,” Mary manages to get out once she has her breathing somewhat under control. Sherlock is still grinning like the cat with the canary as he puts down with his box. “I take it you had a successful run?”

 

            “Oh, very much so,” Sherlock replies pleasedly. He opens the box to reveal a bundle of letters, three flash drives, and something that looks alarmingly like a bottled memory. “This was from the least-disturbed of the safes I found. I would have opened one or two of the others, had I more time. As it is, this has been quite a profitable effort. Now, to repair the faucet. Demonstrate?”

 

            Mary withdraws the two halves of the nickel disc. “This was made as a whole; it was never cut from a sheet, like most coins. It’s meant to be whole and wants to be whole, inasmuch as an object can want something.” She presses the two halves together. “You have to put a little energy into it to overcome the entropy keeping it broken, but if you’re taught to channel the energy properly, you can reverse the break. In this case, _quod quae erat fractum, reparare._ ”

 

            There’s a flash of light and heat, followed by the scent of hot metal. Mary drops the unbroken coin into Sherlock’s hand. “That which was broken, repair,” Sherlock says. He and Mary both look under the faucet—the crack is gone and the etched hieroglyph is intact once again. Sitting back on his heels, Sherlock looks thoughtful. “You mentioned that the invisibility charm could be activated in other languages. Is this a similar case?”

 

            “Just so,” Mary confirms with a grin. Teaching Sherlock the ins and outs of magic is going to be a joy (so long as he doesn’t get too cheeky). “All the words do is build a channel for the energy; language is irrelevant, so long as the meaning is the same. The more precise you are with your wording, the more delicate work you can do.” She holds up the coin. “Instead of telling the halves to fuse or weld or glue, I asked the break to repair itself. Heat’s involved to reestablish the bonds, but only enough to affect the bonds that had been broken in the first place.”

 

            “Hence the seamless fix,” Sherlock concludes, correctly. He checks his watch, looks at the coin, then looks at the underside of the faucet again. “You selected that symbol carefully, then, if precision is important?”

 

            “ _Demedj_ ,” Mary replies. “Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for unity, to unite, or to join. The English word ‘unite’ would work, but ideograms—single pictures or symbols that represent a concept—tend to be more effective than words, which are just written representations of a group of phonemes that represent a concept.”

 

            Sherlock is quiet but comprehending. After a moment, he says, “Thank you”, waves Mary off, and sets about making an appropriate amount of noise for replacing a faucet.

 

            Mary goes back to furniture construction and makes a mental note to donate to that research team up in Leeds that’s trying to sort out why it is that Ikea furniture resists (and, in quite a few cases, inverts) any and all magic that speeds construction, clarifies instructions, or improves structural integrity.

 

            ***

 

            Sherlock is waiting at the Tube station at the end of the workday, wearing different clothing but the same shorter, red-haired form. He takes her hand and places a kiss over her knuckles. “ _Bonjour, Mademoiselle,_ ” he rumbles as she takes his offered elbow. His French is flawless this time. “May I join you on your way home?”

 

            Mary nods and lets Sherlock lead her into the station. “That voice of yours really is unfair,” she whispers in his ear once they’ve found seats in the waiting room. “I’m aware that we’re playing a blushing maiden and a tiny ginger Casanova plumber, but there is such a thing as ‘overkill’.”

 

            Sherlock gives her a devious smile and purrs something lengthy and French into her ear; she catches ‘douilles et balles’ and ‘comparaison du les stries’ and cannot help breaking into muffled giggles. Only Sherlock Holmes could take something as dry as ballistic analysis and make it sound so devastatingly sexy. “You are so unfair,” she giggles. “So unfair.”

 

            When they board the train, Mary is so distracted that she only detects saffron, tea, and vetiver on the air as a gentle, firm hand alights on her shoulder. She jumps; Sherlock twitches in startlement. “Hello, you two,” John greets warmly. He directs them to two open seats and completely fails to be subtle about putting himself between Sherlock and Mary and the rest of the carriage. “Good day at work?”

 

            “Very,” Mary says as Sherlock glances around the carriage quickly. They’re hardly the only people present, but no one appears to be watching them, surreptitiously or otherwise. She and Sherlock exchange a glance; if she’s reading him right, they’re in agreement about being over-cautious. “What brings you here, brother dear?”

 

            To his credit, John’s confusion is only visible for a split second before he catches on. “I only wanted to check in, see how things were going.” He gives Sherlock an elder-brotherly sort of look. “Care to introduce me to your... er, friend?”

 

            By the time they disembark at St. John’s Green, John has interrogated Sherlock, invited Mary and Sherlock to join him for dinner, and engaged the detective in so much inane small talk that Sherlock is almost vibrating with pent-up frustration. They manage to walk about a block before he finally lets out a long exhalation that sounds more like an enormous pneumatic hiss than an exhalation. John rolls his eyes and Mary giggles. “You had to tell him he can shapeshift,” John groans. “You’re literally going to _hiss_ at me now, aren’t you, like some sort of lanky, stroppy alley cat.”

 

            “I shall do no such thing,” Sherlock protests.

 

            “It’s not as if you can’t give as good as you get,” Mary remarks, because it’s true—sphinxes can be _loud_. She’d lived in central Africa between her tenth and twelfth birthdays; one of her clearest memories of the time was watching her father face down, out-roar, and run off an angry bull elephant at their cistern, all without leaving his human shape. “We can make an unholy racket if we feel the need.”

 

            John glances over to give Sherlock a challenging look. Sherlock tosses his head. “I shall do no such thing unless you start it,” he amends. “In that case, I reserve my right to voice my displeasure in any form I see fit.”

 

            “ _Literally_ any for-” John starts to say, but bursts into giggles midway through. “Oh God. Your brother, Sherlock. Spitting fire or acid, I can see, but can you picture that ponce _hissing_ at anyone?”

 

            Sherlock takes all of five seconds to fall apart into snickers and chuckles with John. Despite having no idea what Mycroft is like, Mary can’t help laughing along—their laughter is utterly contagious, like two little boys after a successful pratfall.

 

            Mary and Sherlock both duck back to the loo once they arrive at the little Italian restaurant on Northumberland Street. Mary re-emerges in the form she’d first met John and Sherlock in (she’s glad she learned to write clothes into her spells); Sherlock is back to himself, well-cut suit and all. John looks relieved. “I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to you changing faces like that,” he breathes as Mary and Sherlock take their seats.

 

            The owner of the restaurant—Angelo, if Mary remembers right—bustles over. “Sherlock! John! I did not see you... oh.” He stops and looks at Mary with an expression somewhere between confused dismay and bristling protectiveness. “Hello. Who are you?” His tone isn’t outright hostile, but he’s giving her a look like the one her father used to send to all of her male friends whenever they came over to study or hang out.

 

            Well. Best to fix that early. “Mary Morstan,” she says, offering a hand. “Sherlock and John are helping me on a case.”

 

            As Angelo visibly relaxes and shakes Mary’s hand, John chimes in. “Sherlock and I have invited her to dinner.”

 

            “We’d like a candle,” Sherlock adds. John’s head turns so quickly that Mary briefly worries about whiplash.

 

            Angelo looks thrown for a moment, but then a huge grin spreads over his face. “Magnifico!” he crows, whirling and making a beeline for the kitchen.

 

            John is still staring at Sherlock. “A candle,” he echoes.

 

            Sherlock merely picks up his menu and looks it over. “Tunnacchiu ‘nfurnatu,” he remarks calmly, ignoring John’s gaze completely. “Baked tuna and thinly-sliced potato—does that suit your tastes, Mary?” He sends her a knowing expression over the top of his menu.

 

            How Sherlock knew about Mary’s weakness for tuna, she’ll never know, but damned if she won’t enjoy it while she can. “To a tee,” she replies, tossing a wink at John when he gives her a pleading look. Angelo chooses that moment to return and proudly plants an elegant little wrought-iron candleholder with three candles in the centre of their table.

 

            “We’ll share the tunnacchiu ‘nfurnatu, Angelo,” Sherlock says, snapping the menu shut, “and a glass each of the 2008 Fevre Montee de Tonnerre you’ve got in the back of the wine cabinet.”

 

            “Oh, excellent choice,” Angelo gushes, sweeping up menus and making his way back to the kitchen.

 

            John flushes and fiddles with his napkin. “Really, Sherlock, you didn’t have-”

 

            “Of course I did. You would have paired the tunnacchiu with that cheap red you usually order. It would have been an insult to the dish,” Sherlock replies disingenuously.

 

            John opens and closes his mouth a few times, but it’s abundantly clear that Sherlock simply isn’t going to discuss the candles or what they might mean. Given their chat on the Tube yesterday, Mary’s not sure if the candles are for her and John or for all three of them (and wouldn’t that be something!), but she’s not about to press. “Have you had a chance to look at the things you found, Sherlock?”

 

            “Oh yes,” Sherlock responds gleefully, and this is enough to distract John until Angelo returns with their food and wine. Then it’s the food and wine that do the distracting—Mary can see it when John realises that yes, he would have been entirely wrong about the wine, because the steely, crisp white Sherlock selected is _fantastic_ set against the sweetly tart marinade and the savoury tuna and potato.

 

             She gives Sherlock an appreciative nod and smile. “This is perfect.” Lifting her glass, she raises her eyebrows at Sherlock and John. They lift their glasses too. “To success,” Mary proposes.

 

              John beams. “To the takedown!”

 

               Sherlock rolls his eyes. “To an intellectual challenge.”

 

             “To tying up loose ends,” Ddraig says, sliding into the chair next to Mary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's hoping this was up to snuff. :) Thanks for reading, and apologies again for my tardiness!
> 
> Mary's discussion of sex, love, and relationships is just my opinion. If it offends or irritates someone, I apologise. :)


	9. and welcomes little fishes in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My muse came back from vacation, hence this penultimate chapter being posted in a much more timely manner than the rest.

            The only thing that keeps John from leaping across the table is the knowledge that Ddraig is anything _but_ a middle-aged, overweight man in a really dreadful mauve suit. Mary’s gone pale as a sheet.

 

            “Gatecrashing,” Sherlock remarks dryly, sipping at his wine. “Such etiquette.”

 

            Ddraig sneers. “One hardly bothers to knock if one is visiting the kennels.” Reaching up, he snuffs out the candles with his fingertips, one by one. “I was very amused to learn that I had a visitor today; a very light-fingered one, at that.” He turns a smug smile on John, then Mary. “Plying his wiles on a housemaid, no less; Sherlock Holmes, the great manipulator, famed Detective and _mimic_ of emotion. Were I in the mood to let his little costumed crusade continue, I have no doubt that he’d marry the girl purely to obtain the evidence he wants.”

 

            “Were you in the mood for efficiency, we would not be speaking,” Sherlock replies evenly. “I genuinely doubt you deferred my disposal merely to spare your maid’s delicate sensibilities. In fact, I would wager that, if you did not _need_ me, you wouldn’t have hesitated to kill me upon opening the door this afternoon.”

 

            John grits his teeth, but does not comment. Sherlock hasn’t failed to make it clear that Ddraig is dangerous, but to walk into that house knowing it was entirely possible, even _likely_ , that he could be killed on sight? When all is said and done, John is going to have a very serious, very firm talk with Sherlock.

 

            Ddraig offers a sharp-toothed smile. It doesn’t reach past the corners of his mouth. “Your usefulness extends as far as ensuring that my bleeding heart of a whelp does not do something rash in a fit of spite. _Call your brother._ ”

 

            Something about the tone of Ddraig’s voice in that command catches John’s attention (he notices Mary’s expression briefly twitch into _despair_ , too, which can’t be good). It’s almost as if Ddraig is casting a hook or a noose with his words, attempting to snare Sherlock with them somehow; John instinctively slides his foot over until it meets Sherlock’s under the table, offering tacit support. No hook, verbal or otherwise, will touch Sherlock while John’s around.

           

            “Why?” Sherlock demands.

 

            Shocked silence falls over the table with a crash as Ddraig’s expression freezes and Mary’s eyes go wide.

 

            Ddraig recovers and the sharp-toothed smile turns into a snarl full of enamel razors. “Because I am not above a bit of _wetwork_ ,” Ddraig hisses. “Your life, Sherlock Holmes, is of use to me. Your little friends, however, are nothing more than leverage, and _I will break them if you do not obey._ ”

 

            John grits his teeth. He’s a soldier, through and through; the threat of grievous injury or death doesn’t mean much to him. All he wants is to get Ddraig _away_ from Sherlock and Mary, but he knows instinctively that he is no longer the apex predator in the room. If he strikes, he is dead, and the dead cannot protect anyone.

 

            Knowing it’s one of his only good options remaining, John settles into his old mid-surgery calm, that strange state of focus and awareness so relentless that it wipes away anxiety, panic, and hesitation, leaving only _action_. He tries to pour it into his posture and his expression, tries to project it to Sherlock and Mary, wrap it around them the way he wishes he could shift and mantle them each beneath a wing.

 

            “Fine,” Sherlock says after a moment, and draws his phone from a pocket.

 

            Mycroft picks up after two rings. “Calling, how unusual. How may I help you, dear brother?” John’s acute hearing picks up Mycroft’s response with little trouble. He’s fairly certain Mary can hear it, too, but whether Ddraig has sensitive hearing remains unknown. His snarl has subsided into a sneer, but that’s not indicative of much of anything. “Is this to do with John and Miss Morstan?”

 

            Sherlock casts a glare at Ddraig. “It is, in fact. We were enjoying a lovely dinner until a certain viper decided to inflict itself upon us.”

 

            The silence from the other end of the phone is long. “I see,” Mycroft replies at length. “What does he want?”

 

            Ddraig either cannot hear or simply refuses to offer anything, so Sherlock rolls his eyes and snaps, “He has so very kindly informed me that, should you do anything rash in an effort to defy him, he will not hesitate to kill me.”

 

            The phone makes a noise that sounds vaguely but not quite like a burst of intense static. John has the sneaking feeling that Mycroft was the source of the sound; Mycroft hissing is no longer quite so funny. “Tell him that, so long as he leaves you, John, and Miss Morstan alone, I will not resort to drastic measures.” Mycroft does not sound happy at all about the concession he’s making. “In fact, give him the mobile.”

 

            Sherlock holds out the mobile phone to Ddraig, who takes it between his thumb and middle finger as if it’s a dirty rag. “Whelp,” he purrs.

 

            “Silence,” Mycroft snarls. “If you do not depart that restaurant at once and cease harassing my brother or anyone he associates with, particularly Doctor Watson and Miss Morstan, I will not hesitate to smash every last egg in this nest, do I make myself clear?”

 

            “I’ll have their skins for shoes,” Ddraig growls.

 

            “You’ll be short a shoe and a master race,” Mycroft retorts. “If you had backup donors, you wouldn’t be bothering with pressuring me via my brother. Gregory and I are the only viable pair and this is the only clutch; I suggest you tread carefully.”

 

            Ddraig turns an interesting shade of maroon. “Fine,” he spits. “Have your wretched bastard and his _pets_. If you fail to follow through, _brat_ , I’ll tear out his heart and feed it to you piece by bloody piece.”

 

            “I shan’t fail,” Mycroft says, and hangs up with a click.

 

            Ddraig thrusts the phone back at Sherlock and presses his palms into the table. His fingertips curl as he stands and leans in to get in Sherlock’s face; fingernails-turned-talons dig ten deep furrows into the wood. “If you toast to anything,” he hisses, “I recommend you toast to your brother being true to his word. Your lives depend on it.” With that, he turns and departs.

 

            A nearby restaurant patron dials the police.

 

            ***

 

            Immediately upon arriving back at 221B, Mary rounds on Sherlock. “How did you do it?” she demands, looking him up and down as if something he’s wearing might give her an answer.

 

            Sherlock watches Mary pace around him, baffled. “Do what?”

 

            “Resist him. How did you resist him?” Mary looks under the lapels of Sherlock’s jacket, examines the buttons, looks under his collar—all she finds is the necklace she gave him earlier, the invisibility-forget-me charm. “He’s a fifteen hundred year old dragon who specialises in manipulative, suggestive, and domination magic. You don’t just disobey a direct _command_ like that.”

 

            The way she says the word ‘command’ seems significant. “He cast a spell on me.”

 

            Mary nods. “Oh God, did he. Sherlock, he _commanded_ you. The only thing more compelling than a well-cast _command_ is true enthrallment, and yet you just... turned it aside.”

 

            Interesting. Also: serious implications for the Work. Sherlock will have to learn more about such magic if he’s to fully understand motive. “Perhaps I am immune?” Sherlock suggests. That would certainly be a useful trait, especially if a suspect attempts to mislead him or order him away. “Can you perform a _command,_ as you call it?”

 

            Mary looks back at John, who shrugs. She takes a deep breath and meets Sherlock’s gaze; her eyes are very, very green. “ _Go make three mugs of tea,_ ” she says, and it’s as if something has reached into his hindbrain and seized the proverbial wheel. His feet move of their own volition and his arms and hands work without his say-so and he’s getting mugs and tea out of the cupboards and _he cannot stop himself from doing it._

 

            “Dear God,” he gasps as his hands and feet unerringly find their electric kettle tucked away in another cupboard and set about filling it.

 

            “Not immune, then,” John notes. He sounds caught between unhappiness and interest.

 

            Sherlock cannot take his eyes off of his task, but he can hear Mary make a frustrated noise. “It doesn’t make sense!” she says vexedly. “None at all. My _commands_ are powerful, but Ddraig’s are magnitudes more intense!” He hears her approach more because her voice gets closer than because of any footfalls. “Did you buy a ward?”

 

            The kettle clicks. Sherlock furrows his brow and shakes his head even as his hands take the kettle and pour hot water over the tea bags in the mugs. “I only know what you have taught me,” he says. “Buying a ward wouldn’t have occurred to me before now.”

 

            “Then how...” Mary starts.

 

            John makes the little ‘huh’ sound that John makes when he finds something relevant about a victim, a witness, or a suspect. “I... could I have done it?”

 

            As soon as the third mug is full and steeping, Sherlock finds himself back in control. He turns to face Mary and John, who have joined him in the kitchen. “You did make contact when he issued the _command_.”

 

            “He was trying to... put a hook in you,” John says. “I didn’t like that. I didn’t want to provoke him, so I... er. I let you know I had your back.”

 

            Mary is openly staring at John. “Take his hand,” she tells him. When John looks confused and then wary, she rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “Just do it. Take his hand and think whatever it was that you thought when Ddraig tried the _command_.”

 

            John reaches out and puts his hand into the one that Sherlock has extended. His hand is small, fine, squarish, and warm in Sherlock’s. Sherlock can fold his fingers around John’s hand with ease. He finds he likes that fact, and he likes the warm weight of John’s palm against his.

 

            “Sherlock,” Mary calls. Sherlock doesn’t want to, but he tears his gaze away from John’s hand in his and meets her gaze again. “ _Mop the kitchen floor._ ”

 

            The reached-into feeling never comes. He shakes his head.

 

            “ _Mop it **now**_ ,” Mary orders, putting more emphasis into her words.

 

            There’s still no sense of loss of control. Sherlock shakes his head again.

 

            “Let go of his hand, John, but keep thinking those thoughts. Aim them at him,” Mary instructs. John lets go. “ _Put the kettle away._ ”

 

            Still nothing. Sherlock looks over at John, who looks a little shaken. “Extraordinary,” Sherlock says softly, because it’s true. Even when he can’t act physically, John—steadfast, relentless John—finds a way to shield others from harm. How Sherlock earned a friend so very _good_ is entirely beyond his understanding.

 

            John looks troubled. “I don’t understand.”

 

            Mary smiles at him reassuringly and hands him a mug of tea. “Wards are protective magic—if it’s a shield, a wall, a perimeter, a nullifying field, or a deflector, there’s warding magic involved.” She gives Sherlock one of the mugs, collects the last one for herself, and makes her way back to the sitting room and the sofa. “Some are physical wards—stopping blows, deflecting projectiles, and, in very rare cases, bringing enormous masses and energies to a standstill. Some are elemental wards—deflecting fire, grounding electrical attacks, stopping cold, containing or deflecting air, deflecting water or corrosives, muting sounds.”

 

            “Psychological wards?” Sherlock suggests. By tacit, mutual agreement, he and Mary sit on either side of John, bracketing him. He still seems shaken.

 

            “Oh yes,” Mary confirms. She pats John’s shoulder; he leans into the contact a bit. “The vast majority of magic users have to learn to speak, gesture, or write wards. Spontaneous warders are unusual; spontaneous warders strong enough to stop the _command_ of a mage as powerful as Ddraig without even establishing direct, skin-to-skin contact with their charge?” Mary shakes her head and meets John’s glance with a steady one of her own. “You’re... you’re something unique, John.”

 

            Sherlock sniffs. “Obviously. I could have told you that years ago.”

 

            John huffs out a little laugh. “Thank you, Sherlock, Mary.” He sighs and rests his chin on interwoven fingers. “God. What a disaster dinner was,” he remarks after a long moment. Mary and Sherlock both laugh at that. “No, seriously! Sherlock, Ddraig knows you were at his house. He _tracked us to Angelo’s_.” Grimacing, John ducks his head to press his fingertips to the bridge of his nose in agitated exasperation. “He knew the whole time, and you knew he knew, and you went there knowing full well that the bastard could have killed you!” John’s voice rises until he’s definitely edging into shouty territory; Sherlock leans back a little bit, alarmed. “You can’t do that. You just can’t. If you... if something hap... I...”

 

            Hearing the threat of tears in the way John’s voice falters and breaks in the end bit of his rant, a sudden wash of panic races through Sherlock with a cold rush. Oh no. Nonono. Aren’t they past this point? Didn’t they do the whole ‘oh god you’re not dead’ thing a few nights ago? Why is John about to cry? John shouldn’t cry. John _mustn’t_ cry, not because of Sherlock. It simply isn’t on. Sherlock hates crying, John hates crying, Sherlock doesn’t want to be the cause of John crying, and how does one even stop another person from crying short of knocking them out or gagging them? Desperate to dam up the impending tears yet clueless as to how to go about it without methods John would undoubtedly hate, Sherlock mirrors Mary and places a hand on John’s shoulder.

 

            John abruptly turns and curls into Sherlock’s chest, his surgeon’s hands sliding around to cling to Sherlock’s back when the front of his fitted shirt provides no loose cloth to grip. “No more risks like that, Sherlock. No more. Not without me. You... I can’t. Just... no. No. Don’t. For me. Please.” There is something wet soaking through his shirt.

 

            Oh, damn and blast. Tears. The wet is tears. John is crying and he’s echoing his words from the gravesite three years ago and Sherlock has caused it.

 

            Sherlock looks at Mary with wide eyes, silently begging her for help. The warm, heavy presence of John against his body is scrambling his ability to remember what it is that people do when other people seek physical comfort from them. Should he put his hands on John’s back again? Should he bow his head, or would letting his face touch John’s hair be too much? Would turning himself to face John more fully be acceptable or perhaps too familiar? Will it even work? People sometimes cry harder when they’re in contact with others, and that’s exactly the opposite of what Sherlock wants.

 

            Fine, small hands guide Sherlock’s arms. Mary arranges him so the fingers of his right hand curve around John’s waist and the fingers of his left hand slide up John’s nape to bury themselves in John’s hair. He reflexively curls them, carding through the soft, tawny strands. “John,” Mary says, moving around and off the couch so she’s kneeling beside John and resting against Sherlock’s knees. “No more risks,” she murmurs, reaching up to stroke John’s knee soothingly. “We won’t go back.”

 

            John shakes his head and pushes away from Sherlock long enough to wipe at his nose ineffectively. “We have to,” he rasps. “He’ll take those kids and _twist_ them, Mary. Even if they weren’t Greg’s, I couldn’t leave them there. I... I’ve seen it before.”

 

Sherlock tightens his embrace a bit when he sees that John’s gaze has gone a bit distant. “The war,” he says, because it can only be that.

 

“The war,” John confirms. He rests his forehead against Sherlock’s sternum and shakes his head slowly. “When you’re dealing with extremism of any sort, you’re dealing with a loss of sanity on some level. Doesn’t matter what’s motivating it. This Ddraig fucker—his plans probably don’t involve sending them on suicide bombings and gun attacks, but he’ll break those kids all the same, and... Christ, we just can’t let that happen.”

 

Mary looks up at Sherlock questioningly. He furrows his brow in thought for a moment. Surely there’s some way they can work John into the plan, perhaps as Sherlock’s boss or assistant, or some way to get him into the house unseen... ah.

 

Sherlock unclasps the chain of the invisibility-forget-me charm, then re-fastens it about John’s neck. “No more risks without you? So be it. You’ll come with us.”

 

            ***

 

            Mary looks up from hoovering the bedroom carpet when Sherlock (back in his ginger disguise) and the butler enter. “Bonjour, mademoiselle,” he says warmly when he sees her; she does her shy-blushing-foot-shuffling routine and wonders if John is already in the room. He’d activated the charm in the men’s loo at the Baker Street station, according to Sherlock, so neither of them could be certain if John had gone with Mary or stuck with Sherlock. Perhaps it’s best that way—better not to know, just in case Ddraig gets inquisitive.

 

            “Do your job, Holmes,” the butler growls in Ddraig’s voice. Mary doesn’t startle, but she does give herself a mental facepalm. Of course. Ddraig can shapeshift. Why would he come up in a form she and Sherlock both knew? Stupid. “Fix the pipe in the wall or I’ll take the damages out of your brother’s hide.”

 

            Sherlock sniffs and clatters into the loo. Mary looks to Ddraig, who crooks a finger at her. Her character would approach at once, so Mary switches off the hoover and goes over to Ddraig. “Sir?” she squeaks. For a fleeting moment, she imagines that something warm and soft is pressing into her legs from behind, but she dismisses it as just that—imagination.

 

            “He vandalised a pipe in the wall, child, in order to cheat us out of more money. _That man is a liar and you will not listen to him._ He will only break your heart, and that would sadden me so. A lovely girl like you need not succumb to such predation,” Ddraig rumbles. If Mary didn’t know what she was listening for, his feigned concern would be very convincing, indeed. “ _When he goes to turn off the water main, you will accompany him and prevent him from entering any other rooms in this house._ I don’t want him getting any ideas about my belongings, dear, surely you understand?”

 

            Mary looks properly shocked and saddened, then nods slowly. “Yes, sir, that seems sensible. Thank you, sir.” She gives a little half-bow and makes her sad, careful way back to the hoover. Wherever John is, he’s close—Ddraig had thrown not one, but _two_ _commands_ her way, yet neither had taken hold.

 

            To say that Mary feels relieved would be a massive understatement. Like any mage with formal training, she’s been placed under _command_ so she’ll know the sensation. She hadn’t felt the distinctive back-of-the-brain tug, but Ddraig’s wording... God. Had it gotten to her, Sherlock would have been indefinitely etched into her mind as a liar who couldn’t be trusted. She would have lost him and John. Mary has never, ever been so grateful to escape a _command_.

 

            It wouldn’t be the end of the world and all happiness in it, of course—Mary has plenty of friends in London—but the more she thinks about it, the more she hates the very thought of never having the two lunatics in her life somehow. Theirs is a fine, fine vintage of eccentricity, one that will undoubtedly broaden and blossom with time and maturity, and she wants to be around to enjoy it, maybe even contribute a bit to it when she feels like it.

 

            “Oh, you are gone,” Mary says aloud as she tries to edge the clunky hoover between the bunk beds.

 

            There’s a particularly loud crash from the bathroom, followed by baritone grousing and grumbling. Mary turns the hoover off and sets it upright to go investigate; Sherlock bursts out of the loo like an irritated, flour-dusted bee before she can get very far. “We’re turning off the main,” he growls, “and we’re doing it now.” He stomps out in a cloud of plaster dust; chuckling, Mary follows close behind.

 

            ***

 

            They’re making their way up the basement stair after shutting the water main when Sherlock hears voices and pauses. He motions for Mary to come up. “I think I heard the front door,” he whispers once she’s drawn even with him. Much like John, she has acute hearing—he trusts her to listen well and tell him what she’s hearing.

 

            After a moment, Mary’s eyebrows go up. “It’s the DI and your brother,” she murmurs, just loudly enough that Sherlock can hear her. “Ddraig’s saying something... ‘ahead of schedule, just to be safe, surely you understand’. They’ve moved the eggs!”

 

            Peering around the doorframe briefly, Sherlock attempts to triangulate where Ddraig, Lestrade, and Mycroft are going with the clutch of eggs. Ddraig’s plans ride on that clutch—he’s going to put them in the safest room in the house. Ddraig’s plans also ride on maintaining a dearth of conclusive evidence of his machinations and criminal involvements, so it follows that, if any documentation exists, it’s going to be in that safest room.

 

            Unless, of course, Ddraig is clever and hides his vital records in plain sight, but Sherlock will cross that bridge if and when he comes to it. For now, getting the egg room on his mental map of the house is priority one.

 

            Turning to ask Mary to do the listening and locating, Sherlock has to restrain himself from leaping right out of the basement door. Instead of Mary’s plain, frumpy maid character standing at his side, she’s waiting and listening in her natural form.

 

            It’s impossible not to stare. Where John is sturdy, tawny, and leonine, Mary is long, charcoal-spotted-cream, and built like a greyhound. Even folded, Sherlock can tell that she has the narrow, tapered wings of a falcon rather than the broad, soaring wings of an eagle. “Oh,” he breathes. “That’s why you’re faster.”

 

            Mary grins cheekily, then snaps her head back to the doorway. Her ears twitch forward attentively. “They’re coming this way!” She bolts down the steps in total silence, leaving Sherlock to feel lumbering and ungainly as he tries and fails to move as quickly and silently as she had. He picks a spot behind several tall boxes and sets about shucking his clothing for a shapechange. He needs stealth, not opposeable thumbs.

 

            With the case on as it is, he still hasn’t given the shapeshifting a great deal of deep consideration or analysis. It’s so intuitive to alter his self-image and simply _will_ himself into the new shape that the mental leap has to be something instinctive, a natural neural pathway coded into a _phouka’s_ mind. There’s definitely something inhibiting pain—rearranging his entire skeleton and sprouting a new set of limbs within a minute should be excruciating, yet it feels more like popping several stiff joints.

 

            Shift completed, Sherlock folds his wings over his back carefully and crouches low on onyx-furred paws, creeping forward until he can see more of the basement.

 

            Ddraig comes to a halt at the foot of the stairs, giving the basement a cursory scan before turning and watching the stairwell. Slowly, moving deliberately and carefully, Lestrade backs down the stairs carrying one end of a large crate. Mycroft appears with the other end as Lestrade continues to back up.

 

            “Put them down,” Ddraig growls. When Lestrade and Mycroft comply, gently lowering the crate to the floor, Ddraig lifts the lid of the crate. “Acceptable.” Replacing the lid, he turns and stalks to the back wall of the basement. There’s a harsh, coughing snarl and a crack, and something groans and rumbles like the stone gates to some sort of oubliette. “Follow.”

 

            Mary and Sherlock slowly creep out from their concealment, watching as Ddraig leads Lestrade and Mycroft down an unlit flight of worn brick steps that has appeared in the floor. The scent of wet stone and cold, clear, fresh water fills the basement. Eventually even Sherlock’s low-light vision fails to pick up where Lestrade and his brother have gone; he gives Mary a questioning glance. “It’s a risk,” he mouths soundlessly. John had been adamant about risks.

 

            “It’s the kids,” Sherlock reads on Mary’s lips. She turns and pads down the steps.

 

            Sherlock follows, pleased that he doesn’t even have to argue to get his way.

 

            ***

 

            What with Detective Sherlock Digs-through-skips-for-evidence-with-gleeful-abandon Holmes on the scene, John’s a bit surprised that it’s Mary Morstan who leads the way into the cold, dark, wet, creepy brick staircase in the barmy racist dragon’s basement.

 

            He’s not surprised that they’re going down the staircase, though. He’d given that up as a bad job as soon as Ddraig had opened it with a hacking snarl and a slam of one fist into the concrete floor. It’s just how life with Sherlock Holmes goes, really—horrible basement dungeons, sewer hideaways, and underground lairs always end up explored. Always.

 

            When his paw lands in a freezing cold puddle on a step, John wonders if there’s some sort of dankness-to-immediacy of exploration relationship. The wetter and more algae-coated a dungeon, the more quickly Sherlock feels the urge to do some spelunking, or something like that. Extra bonus points for dragons or anything that smacks of Bazalgette’s work.

 

            The further they descend, the chillier it gets and the stronger the scent of water, algae, and wet stone becomes. Shortly after John counts the two hundredth step, he realises he can faintly hear splashes, echoes, and a rumbling, gravelly basso. Mary and Sherlock both have their ears are angled high and forward, and Mary is slowly reducing her pace—they can hear it, too.

 

            All three of them come to an abrupt halt at the bottom of the stair, slack-jawed.

 

            The stone-and-brickwork passageway ends abruptly after the last step—it’s a tunnel mouth, just a little tunnel mouth that opens into an _enormous_ cavern lit by floating white motes of light. Huge, complex, glistening clusters of stalactites and curtain formations hang and drape from brickwork arches and a stony ceiling, straining and cascading down toward the upraised points of stalagmites and the smooth, glassy surface of what appears to be a cold, clear underground lake. A narrow strip of sandy, pebble-strewn beach runs the visible perimeter of the chamber, sloping gently down to the water’s edge. Natural fissures in the ceiling bristle with hundreds of tiny, narrow stalactites like stony icicles, every tip glittering with a drop of water yet to accrue enough mass to fall free. John follows one as it drops, down to the surface of the lake.

           

            There’s light under the water. Deep in the heart of the lake, underwater stars illuminate rippling piles of buttery yellow gold, glittering facets of gems, and moonlight-pale silver and platinum.

 

            Deep in the heart of the lake, something huge and sinuous is moving.

 

            Thank God Sherlock is as unflappable and observant as he is. He spots the huge thing, too, and darts back up the stair and out of sight in a flicker of jet black fur and feathers; Mary, startled by the sudden motion, moves in the same direction in the same sort of instinctive motion as a flock of birds taking off together. 

 

            John, being invisible, resists the instinctive flight impulse and watches as the huge thing comes to shore. For a brief, awful moment, John’s convinced he’s seeing an enormous, animated liver, but then more of it surfaces and he realises it’s actually some sort of liver-coloured, vaguely dinosaurish creature with bowed alligator legs and wings that seem far too small for its body. The awkward dragon prowls ashore, powerful and dangerous-looking despite its proportions, and regards an odd rock near its feet with an unmistakeably smug sneer. “Leave,” the beast says, and John recognises Ddraig’s voice from last night, only deeper and louder.

 

            One of the rocks near the dragon’s feet moves. “No,” Greg snaps, standing from where he’d knelt to lower the egg crate to the sandy ground.

 

            Ddraig feigns surprise. “Oh?”

 

            “We’re not leaving, Ddraig,” Mycroft says coolly as he rises to stand beside Greg. “Our bargain demands that we watch the clutch until their hatching, and then and only then were we to hand the brood over to you.”

 

            Ddraig snorts derisively. From a creature about the size of a City bus, it’s less an expression of mild derision and more a violent, disdainful burst of wind. “Bad enough that you were half an hour late; now you fancy yourselves in a position to deny me! The bargain is off. Leave at once. Your bastard half-brother is upstairs; need I say more?”

 

            “Enough with the threats!” Greg snarls. “You’ve ruined our lives!”

 

            In his native form, Ddraig’s face is alarmingly mobile and expressive. He twists his lips and muzzle into a moue of feigned, patronising disdain. “You have been so terribly stubborn, Gregory,” he says disappointedly. “I would not need to resort to such extremities had you been more cooperative! I wouldn’t harm a fly of my own accord, dear Gregory, but this is for the greater good. What am I to do, when my life’s work calls?”

 

            John sees Mycroft bristle. “Your life’s work is a crime against morality,” he spits. The amount of venom is surprising coming from the man John had come to regard as something of a supercomputer on legs.

 

            “Morality!” Ddraig cries. “When these humans run about slaughtering and abusing and raping one another, when they spent centuries hunting our kind down and taking us apart to be sold piecemeal like swine?” A burst of flame spits from between his teeth in outrage. “They repress us and plot against us, they brainwash us into thinking them harmless, they grind our bones and drink our blood, they split our eggs, they spread over this planet like a cancer, they take everything for themselves, and you want to speak about morality! It is _moral_ , idiot child, to wipe them from the face of the planet!”

 

            “No one’s killed a dragon or broken a nest for hundreds of years, Ddraig!” Lestrade retorts. “You haven’t got a leg to stand on, much less moral high ground—don’t think I don’t know your history! You create scandals. You fix trials, you hire hit men, you sabotage projects. You wring good people of everything and then set them on each other when you’re done. You’re sick, is what you are, treating people like that!”

 

            Fire spills from Ddraig’s jaws again. “Do not imagine that you can bully me,” he growls threateningly, flexing his claws in the sand. “I need only say a few words and your detective will die in any of a dozen ways. See reason, Gregory, and I’ll forgive you your anger—it is never easy to learn that one has been deceived all his life. You call them ‘people’, Gregory; they’re naught but a plague of disgusting, vicious monkeys. You know it is the truth. Leave the clutch and I will leave the bastard.”

 

            “My God,” Lestrade says, “you are utterly demented.” Ddraig ignores the remark, striding out of the water toward the crate.

 

            Mycroft sniffs. “If humanity is as he describes it, he is more human than anyone.”

 

            Ddraig twitches.

 

            Ddraig _screams._            

 

            The next few seconds are total chaos. Mycroft ducks below Ddrag’s claws as Greg lets out an unholy _shriek_ ; there’s an explosion of silver and sand and suddenly Ddraig is scrambling back to escape the razor sharp teeth of a silver-scaled dragon nearly three times his size. John’s heart flies into his throat when he spots the egg crate still on the sand at the new dragon’s feet.

 

            There’s really no other option. With every ounce of willpower he has, he imagines shields, mirrors, force fields, down pillows, and every sort of impact foam he can think of and tucks it all neat and tight and unbreakable around the crate as he flings himself into the air and arrows into the fray.

 

            ***

 

            Sherlock and Mary reverse their retreat when a terrible scream rends the air.

 

            Scrambling down the steps, they’re just in time to see Lestrade’s humanoid form explode outward, a mercury-bright storm unfurling at lightning speed. The fleshy pink dragon that had emerged from the lake backpedals hastily as gaping jaws bristling with ivory white fangs snap shut right where its head had been moments earlier.

 

            The pink dragon recovers and snaps back, hissing out something as taut and cutting as a garrote. A crimson gash opens up across the silver dragon’s breast; it snarls out a series of blunt, harsh consonants and the pink dragon’s head jerks to the side violently.

 

            Something moves near the silver dragon’s hind legs—Mycroft, springing to his feet with more agility than Sherlock had ever witnessed him exhibit. He gasps when Mycroft runs at Ddraig, takes a flying leap, and then _unfolds_.

 

            It’s really the only way to describe how it happens. It’s as if the human form was just a container into which a full-grown dragon had been compacted and pressure-sealed, ready to burst free at any moment. If it happened any more slowly, it’d be grotesque, limbs and spines stretching as mass and muscle and scales return to their proper places, batlike wings and serpentine tails twisting free, but all of the changes happen in mere seconds, so the horror is only momentary, as brief as the change itself.

 

            Mycroft crashes into Ddraig with his claws spread. They tangle and snap and snarl, tumbling back into the lake in a ruddy pink knot of thrashing tails and toothy maws darting and weaving on long, sinuous necks. Sherlock can only discern which thing is which because his brother is slightly smaller and a bit paler. Mycroft is no less dangerous, despite his smaller size; he manages to sink his teeth into the upper arm and propatagium of one of Ddraig’s wings, breaking it with a vicious snap of his head. The water foaming around them, already stained pink by the scrapes and cuts the two have scored, runs richly, darkly crimson.

 

            Ddraig screams. He writhes and produces a harsh, booming noise; Mycroft is violently ejected from the lake as if fired from a cannon. He lands on the shore heavily and lets out a low, wounded groan. Ddraig rears up from the water and, hissing something sharp at Lestrade, opens his jaws to emit a roaring jet of blue-white flame.

 

            Lestrade’s size works against him—he’s too big to dodge quickly enough to avoid the flame. He rears back, clearly expecting pain...

 

            ... and the flame curls and rebounds away from something in the air, as if halted by some invisible barrier.

 

            Lestrade clearly knows enough to decide that an opportunity is an opportunity, no matter how inexplicable or unexpected. He rears up and opens his jaws, rows of razor-sharp teeth gleaming in the light of Ddraig’s failing breath weapon. The only warning Sherlock gets is Mary’s bark of alarm and all of his fur suddenly standing on end before the cavern is lit up, this time a thousand times brighter and a thousand times whiter, and a concussive blast of sound rips through the air, knocking him from his feet.

 

            ***

 

            Mary’s ears are ringing and her side is sore from being knocked back into the stairs, but her vision is unimpaired when she opens her eyes and gets to her feet to survey the chamber.

 

            Sherlock is wobbling to his feet a few steps down, moving with that tentative, hesitant sway of the temporarily blinded. Down on the beach, the smaller knucker—Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft—visibly pants where he’s sprawled.

 

            A breathless wail loud enough to pierce her deadened hearing draws Mary’s attention to the waterfront. DI Lestrade is hauling Ddraig ashore by his tail. Half of Ddraig’s face is charred and dark; severe burns wreath the lower sections of his legs and the part of his tail that the DI has clutched in his teeth. Ddraig says something, raises a blistered forepaw in a placating gesture.

 

            Lestrade drops him, closes his jaws around Ddraig’s head, and gives a savage jerk. When the DI opens his jaws and leaves to attend to Mycroft, Ddraig’s head flops to the sand and does not move again.

 

            A flicker of movement near where the fight started catches Mary’s eye.

 

            There, in a perfectly circular island of even sand in a sea of furrows and footprints, John is sprawled over the unbroken crate, his chest rising and falling like a bellows. He wiggles a bit, rolls, and flops to the sand bonelessly, clearly too exhausted to even bother folding his wings or rearranging his limbs more comfortably.

 

            Mary goes to Sherlock and tucks a wing over him, guiding him down the steps and across the beach to John. The DI is crouched over Mycroft, one clawed forepaw extended and wreathed in the peachy glow of healing magic—she sees no need to interrupt him when it’s perfectly clear that Mycroft is a) wounded and b) being attended to. John doesn’t appear to be injured, but Sherlock almost certainly needs to know that he’s all right.

 

            John tips his head enough to meet Mary’s eyes as she approaches; he smiles at her and shifts his gaze to Sherlock, who’s still fumbling along under Mary’s wing. His smile softens and tips up at one corner. “Made it,” his lips shape as he looks back at Mary.

 

            Sherlock must pick up on John’s scent, because he darts out from under Mary’s wing and finds John by tripping over him. John lies there, tolerant, as Sherlock sniffs and paws around at him, apparently checking for injuries. “You all right?” John asks.

 

            “You warded the crate,” Mary says. She’s been staring at the crate and the circle of undisturbed sand in amazement.

 

            John nods after a moment. He’s watching Mary’s lips closely.

 

            “You haven’t moved, have you? You were right under everything.”

 

            John nods again after a longer moment. “I was,” his narrow lips shape. “Got stepped on. Lestrade. Fucking rude.” His smile turns a bit wry.

 

            Startled, Mary glances over at the DI. He’s easily four metres at the shoulder; given his length and the depth of his chest, there’s no way he weighs anything less than thirty tonnes. She looks back down at the un-squished John in awe. He just keeps smiling and shuts his eyes. Sherlock, apparently satisfied that John is intact, drops to the sand beside him.

 

             Mary shakes her head and settles down on Sherlock’s other side. It’ll be a cold day in Hell when Sherlock Holmes and John Watson don’t manage to amaze her somehow.

 

            ***

 

            Mycroft, Sherlock, and Mary sit at Ddraig’s mahogany desk in the study, poring over ledgers, yellowed scrolls, and spreadsheets on several different tablet devices. John has no idea how to interpret most of the numbers and notations, so he’s retreated to the leather sofa tucked against the wall opposite the desk. Greg sits on the rug nearby, leaning back against the crate containing the clutch.

 

            “Why didn’t you do that right from the start?” John asks. If he’d been in that position (and if he’d been the bigger dragon), Ddraig wouldn’t have had a chance to take a DNA sample, much less anything else. “Take him out, I mean, if you were able to do it the whole time.”

 

            Greg huffs out a laugh. “I couldn’t. Neither of us could. We’d lose whatever it was the bargain promised us, and Ddraig would get to keep whatever it was we traded. The contracts he drew up were very clear about that.”

 

            “But... he broke the bargain himself. Didn’t he know that would happen?” It seems almost too stupid—after so much time spent plotting and planning and accounting for contingencies, could Ddraig really have miscalculated so grievously?

 

            Lestrade shakes his head and pats the crate. “He counted on me getting attached to the clutch. He didn’t count on me getting attached to Mycroft.”

 

            John and Sherlock’s jaws drop.

 

            At the desk, Mycroft purses his lips. “I am still displeased with your decision, Gregory,” he says without looking up from the sheaf of papers in his hands. A stranger would only hear flat disappointment, but John’s been around the elder Holmes enough that the warmth in his tone is impossible to miss. Sherlock makes a horrified sound and badgers Mary into trading chairs with him.           

           

            Greg snorts. “I had it under control.”

 

            “There but for the grace of John Watson’s wards,” replies Mycroft evenly.

 

            After an awkward silence and a lot of mortified glares from Sherlock, John clears his throat. “So. Greg. Since when did dragons shoot lightning bolts, and how old are you, anyway?”

 

            Greg grins.            

            

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bizarre to think that this is almost finished. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and I hope this chapter was a fun one to read! Action is hard to pace but oh so much fun to write.
> 
> In other news, I never want to write in present tense again.


	10. with gently smiling jaws

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear. God. 
> 
> Life is an unruly bitch sometimes. Between being ill enough to land myself in hospital, two or three major papers, and dealing with a HUGE unit of social studies lessons that I'm going to be teaching very soon, I've had next to NO time to finish this. 
> 
> I am SO SORRY this took so long. Have nearly four thousand words of fluff and the promise that I am not done with this universe in any way, shape, or form.

            “Seventeen sixty-three,” John says aloud as he dumps the last of the shredder debris into the paper bin. “Blimey.”

 

            Mary shrugs. “He’s a dragon, John. Even the minor ones live for hundreds of years. A dragon like him? He’ll be around for two thousand at the least.”

 

            “Lestrade-et-Thouels!” Sherlock snarls into the couch cushions. He had not been best pleased when he’d learned that the DI’s surname was really just a nod to a little town that had sprung up near his old hatching ground (Lestrade’s actual surname is impossible for non-dragons to pronounce, not even shapeshifters, which only serves to infuriate Sherlock further).

           

            John tosses a box of broken CDs and magnet-wiped floppy disks into the recycling bin. “If they live for so long, how is the world not overrun with dragons? Don’t they have entire clutches of eggs instead of just one or two?”

 

            “Low fertility,” Mary responds. “There are maybe two thousand dragons in England; Mycroft and Greg’s clutch is probably the first in about three or four hundred years. It’s a shame they’ll probably be sterile. The birth rate’s been dismal, even by dragon standards.”

 

            “Ridiculous!” Sherlock huffs, not bothering to catch himself as he slides halfway off the sofa. He’s been very clear that he’s dreadfully, horribly inconvenienced by how difficult it is to pick up on supernaturals just by looking at them for a few seconds. It’s understandable on some level, but Mary’s still considering a silencing spell. She’s patient when it comes to childish complaining, but not _that_ patient.

 

            Instead, Mary simply continues to fold and pack away the two changes of clothes she’d brought over from her flat during the sorting process. “Almost as ridiculous as getting a call at ten PM the Saturday before school starts about how your classroom got packed up because your room got confused with the room of the teacher that retired last year,” she agrees.

 

            “ _Must_ you?” Sherlock whines from somewhere under the coffee table. He kicks his heels against the wall over the top of the sofa. “I don’t _want_ you to go. _John_ doesn’t want you to either, though he won’t say it.”

 

             John puts his tea down. “Don’t drag me into this, Sherlock. Mary has a job of her own to do.”

 

            “But we have the _Work_ , and so much remains to be done!” When Mary doesn’t respond, Sherlock’s toes curl and his heels thump the wall with every ounce of impotent petulance he can manage. “I have a three-volume spellbook, a potions compendium, a manual of charms, and two golem blueprints, and you’re going to go back to a primary school classroom! John, take note! If a murderous sorceror goes free because I have not been taught to properly utilise the necessary information, it will be entirely Mary Morstan’s fault for neglecting to teach me in a timely manner!”

 

            John glances at Mary. Mary rolls her eyes. Seven o’clock on a Sunday morning is too early to get tangled in one of Sherlock’s strops, so they continue to ignore the detective and his tantrum. “Breakfast?” John asks instead, offering her his arm and a warm-eyed smile.

 

            “Excellent,” Mary replies, shouldering her bag and sliding her arm through his. They exchange knowing smiles when Sherlock ignores their departure.

 

            ***

 

            The Nordic Bakery on Dorset Street, much like its sister locations, has that distinctly cool, minimalist Scandinavian sort of look, right down to the font of the signage (bolded Helvetica, left aligned, no borders or flourishes—John knows this because Sherlock makes a point of telling him these things whilst complaining about his blog). How the decorators managed to create a space that can be described as both modern _and_ rustic is beyond John, but they’ve done it. Mary sits down at one of the little tables just outside the door—she’d said that she might just drown in the scent of baking bread, cane sugar, and spices if she waits inside, and as fantastic a way to go as that sounds, she wants her cinnamon bun first—and watches him through the shop window as he places their orders.

           

            Eventually, John emerges bearing a takeaway coffee in each hand and a bag with a pair of cinnamon buns in it clutched between the pinky and ring finger of his right hand. He gives Mary a grin as she stands to meet him. “Fresh from the oven,” he says victoriously as Mary takes the bag. She holds onto the buns and tosses the bag in a bin as they pass, then takes her coffee in exchange for one of the buns. “It’s almost worth getting up this early to get them fresh.”

 

            Mary is in the middle of taking a bite of the piping-hot bun. “Mmph,” she grunts in pleasure. John does the same and closes his eyes in bliss. He’s been a sucker for cardamom since going to Afghanistan.

 

            They walk back to the Baker Street tube station, munching on sweetly spiced pastry and sipping at the strong coffee. John asks Mary about her work—he’s always wondered how it is that teachers do what they do with any success, much less stay sane whilst doing it. Mary positively glows as she tells him about lesson plans, transition games, and primary-school science experiments, and John can’t tear his eyes away. He doesn’t even want to tear his eyes away. She’s all golden hair and rosy skin and sparkling, mossy green eyes, lit from within by her love for her work; even the morning sunlight pales in comparison.

 

            The last time he had felt this stupefied, he’d been standing in a lab in the basement of Bart’s, listening as a lanky git with ridiculous cheekbones dissected his life the way a master watchmaker disassembled an antique pocketwatch.

 

            Bloody hell. Sherlock.

 

            John suppresses a sigh with another bite of cinnamon bun. _“She finds you attractive,”_ Sherlock had said. _“She would be receptive to any overtures, should you make them. She’ll make you happy.”_ The look of resignation on the detective’s face after that pronouncement had been so profound that John had almost, _almost_ initiated a _serious_ conversation about feelings rather than the slightly avoidant one they’d been having.

 

            When they reach the station and Mary turns to say good-bye, the words fly from John’s lips before he can stop them. “Meet me for dinner tonight.” His cheeks feel almost sunburnt as mortification constricts his lungs and snaps his mouth shut with a click. He somehow pries it back open, fails to produce words, shuts it again.

 

            “Angelo’s at seven,” Mary answers readily, smiling knowingly. She laughs as John blushes even more, this time at his own transparency. “Oh, John, I don’t mind—I’ve been doing my fair share of unsubtle ogling.” That makes John feel a bit better, at least. “One thing, though—I think we ought to invite Sherlock along.”

 

            That’s... unexpected. “Why?” John asks.

 

            “Why not?”

 

            John has to think that over.

 

            It’s not that he’s opposed, really. Mary has more than proven that she can tolerate, manage, and even enjoy Sherlock’s antics, so it’s not like his presence on a date is going to result in disaster. If anything, it could be rather fun. Mary seems to have a knack for keeping Sherlock on point in unorthodox ways, and Sherlock seems like he’s starting to _like_ Mary. The man had asked for a candle and ordered Mary’s favourite dish—what else but fondness could it be?

 

            It’s not a matter of trust, either. How it’s not a matter of trust, John isn’t sure—it may just be a sign that he’s a little more broken than he thought—but the fact remains that, even though he’s _definitely_ not thrilled about three years of thinking he’d watched his friend commit suicide and all the other stressors piled atop that, he still trusts Sherlock as much as he ever has.

 

            It’s not even that John feels threatened—he knows from experience what it looks like when a woman tries to get close to him just to get closer to Sherlock, and Mary’s behaviour isn’t consistent with that at all.

 

            So far as John can tell, it’s an issue of implications.

 

            One: if they make a place for Sherlock in this relationship and things _work_ , it’ll be yet another thing in John’s life that’s tangled in Sherlock’s gravity somehow. John isn’t sure how comfortable he is with that.

 

            Two: John has spent his entire life with the understanding that at some point he’d get married to a human woman. He knows how to flirt with human women, knows how to romance them—he has _absolutely no idea_ how to flirt with a sphinx woman, much less said sphinx woman (sphinxess?) _and_ a genius shapeshifting detective. He doesn’t know what it means that, after forty years of believing he wanted and would get one thing, he’s found himself considering something completely, wonderfully, terrifyingly _different_.

 

            “I’m not... opposed,” he ventures, “but... would he. Er. Be on the date, you know. With us?”

 

            “Is that what you want?” Mary asks gently.

 

             John clears his throat. “I mean... if he’s. You know, with us. Invited there and all, and I’m not... no. No?” It sounds pathetic. Frankly, it _is_ pathetic.

 

            Mary lets him have his weak not-quite-a-denial, which is somehow even worse than if she’d given a response. “At the very least, inviting him along will prevent him trying to eavesdrop in some alternate form.”

 

            “Christ,” John groans, scanning nearby rooflines and passers-by before he can stop himself. “That’s my peace of mind gone.”

 

            “Barely a week in his company and I’m wondering why you expected any in the first place,” Mary teases. “Go home and tell him about tonight. It’ll be fine, I promise.” With a parting wink, she saunters off to her platform, leaving John to wonder when his life became a bizarre amalgam of romance novel, Harry Potter, and mystery thriller series.

 

            More importantly, what does it say about his sanity that he might just _like it_ that way?

 

***

 

            Sherlock blinks at John over the eyepiece of his microscope, hands frozen in the process of replacing a slide on the stage. “Mary wants me to join you?” he echoes.

 

            Christ. Sherlock Holmes, repeating something? John resists the urge to fidget by putting himself into parade rest, meeting Sherlock’s eyes directly, and nodding once. “Yes.”

 

            John finds himself under the full force of Sherlock’s ten-thousand-watt stare. He clasps his hands tighter behind his back and sets his jaw as Sherlock’s gaze tracks over his face and down his body. The impulse to look at his feet, the floor—anywhere but at Sherlock’s face—is almost a tangible sensation. It redoubles when Sherlock’s gaze snaps back up to John’s.

 

            Turning back to his microscope, Sherlock’s fingertips flutter against the coarse focus dials, as frenetic as the pulse John can see just under his jawline. John doesn’t miss the fleeting expression of _longing_ that crosses Sherlock’s face when he thinks he’s turned away enough to hide such a lapse.

 

            All of John’s reluctance crumples in the face of that split-second crack in the detective’s façade. “I want you there,” he says before his usual English reserve can reassert itself.

 

            Sherlock’s head whips back up; he stares at John, wide-eyed. It’s the first time John has ever seen him truly shocked. “I...” he croaks, and his cheeks blaze. “I shall consider it.” He looks at his microscope, then back at John. “Have you established a place and time?”

 

            John nods. “Seven, at Angelo’s.”

 

            At that, Sherlock stands and flees from the flat.

 

            John sighs. He really needs to be the one doing the getting-up-and-leaving at some point.

 

            ***

 

            It takes Sherlock the work of a half-hour to track down the school where Mary works. Round and optimistic and modern, the Michael Faraday School sits at the heart of the Aylesbury estate, a mere city block away from the open fields and greenery of Burgess Park and Addington Square. Perhaps the only similarity Sherlock can find between his old primary school and this one is that of excellence—both schools merit an ‘outstanding’ rating from Ofsted, but Sherlock’s alma mater was and still remains a stuffy, musty hell.

 

            The entryway to the school opens into an airy, naturally-lit atrium at the heart of the building. Two long, wooden tables with benches sit just in front of magenta couches. The couches sit in loose rings around low, white tables, and everything has that burnished glow peculiar to frequently-used, lovingly-cared-for furniture. Behind the couches and tables, a flight of steps curls up the side of a large, mounting, yellow... buttress of sorts, complete with long, narrow slot windows that offer glimpses of what appears to be an open lecture space within the yellow fortress’ walls. Second-floor classrooms open onto a balcony that runs the entire visible circumference of the atrium. The floor and parts of the baffled ceiling are polished, pale wood; Sherlock is intrigued by the way the unusual shape of the room and its ceiling change the acoustics of his footsteps.

 

            If Sherlock were given to sentiment, he might take a moment to wonder what life might have been like coming up in a school such as this.

 

            “Bit different than our day, isn’t it?”

 

            Sherlock turns on his heel and spots Mary leaning in the doorway to a classroom with a sign that says “Y1” just above the door. She must have been watching him look around; she’s got a knowing smile on her face that all but shouts ‘workplace pride’. “William Alsop,” he replies. “Modernist, avant-garde, known for his use of colour and unusual shape. Completed in... 2010, I’d say, though 2011 is possible.”

 

            Mary beams. “Bang on.” She tips her head at the yellow fortress—it meets the circular atrium wall not far from her room—and chuckles. “If the exterior didn’t give it away, I reckon the Rock was more than enough to do so.” She straightens and retreats into her classroom, beckoning for Sherlock to follow. “I take it John talked with you?” She gathers an armful of books (reference texts for her own use; far too thick to be for her students) and starts placing them on a bookshelf near her desk (less an office desk and more an adult-height table near one corner of the room).

 

            Sherlock makes his way across the room slowly, crouches beside her and grasps half of the remaining books in a nearby box with one hand. He lifts the stack and removes books one at a time with his free hand, shelving them carefully. “I have been the reason each of John’s previous girlfriends have left him,” he says. As ever, having a task to excuse a lack of eye contact is convenient for cutting to the heart of a matter with someone whose opinion he cares about. “I admit that I intentionally created problems with one or two, but the others left because they claimed he was giving me all of his time.”

 

            “A legitimate grievance if they only wanted John,” Mary replies coolly.

 

            Sherlock gives up on trying to follow whatever non-order Mary has things in and plops his handful of texts onto the shelf. He sets about arranging things properly—no library, personal or public, should go without the Dewey decimal system. “And you don’t.” He doesn’t look up from what he’s doing.

 

            Mary opens one of the larger boxes and begins removing smaller, plastic bins full of early readers and picture books, arranging them on the bookshelves lining the wall beneath the windows. “Obviously,” she replies, winking when Sherlock shoots her a petulant look. “You light him up. He grounds you. You’re both self-contained, but together? I’d have to be a right idiot to upset that.”

 

            “And where does that leave you?” Sherlock asks. Why would she agree to John’s invitation if she believes there’s no space for her?

 

            “That leaves me to discover where—or if—there’s a way to balance the equation for three variables,” Mary replies patiently.

 

            To Sherlock, that seems like a risky wager. “And if there isn't?” He’s run out of books to organise and he has no idea what to do with the large, colourful foam puzzle pieces in one of the other open boxes. Without distractions, his need to observe wins out and he reestablishes eye contact.

           

            Mary looks relaxed and untroubled by the potential for failure. She shrugs. “Then I hope we’ll be able to stay friends and move on.”

 

            Of all the possible outcomes of this thing, it’s the acrimonious break-up that Sherlock dreads most. Even if it’s just between John and Mary (highly, highly unlikely, given their natures and the synergy Sherlock has already observed), it’ll invariably result in Sherlock being in a situation he has neither the instinct nor experience to successfully navigate. Because John was the one to initiate things, however, Sherlock is just going to have to accept the risk... and perhaps learn from Mary’s resilient, pragmatic nature if things go awry. “That’s all well and good,” he replies at length, “but what, then, if remaining friends is not an option?”

 

            Sighing, Mary straightens and regards Sherlock with her hands on her hips. “Sherlock. Trying to predict or plan for anything before you’ve got information is _pointless_. You’ll drive yourself crazy trying.”

 

            Sherlock finds himself struck speechless—it’s as if Mary plucked one of his most tired reprimands to the Yard straight from his head. _It’s a fatal error to theorise without data._ Being on the receiving end of the admonition is strange beyond words, especially when the way she says it is the honest, mentor-to-student version of his own scathing, disparaging delivery.

 

            Mary continues, unbothered by Sherlock’s silence. “No, there’s no guarantee of success, but until we try it, we won’t get a better picture of the odds in our favour.” She smiles at him. Yet another strange feeling: earning a smile of fondness between equals (his favourite of John’s smiles) from someone who is not John. Strange, but not undesirable. He tries to smile in return; it must not look the way he wants it to, because Mary chuckles and gently pats his upper arm (sign of affection, a desire to comfort). “Consider this an experiment with a hypothesis of us.”

 

            Sherlock mulls that over as he prods at the contents of the box with the foam puzzle pieces. He lets Mary direct him in laying them out on the floor near the windows and a rocking chair, interlocking the edges as he turns the idea of ‘experiment with a hypothesis of us’ over and over in his mind.

 

            People have never quite made sense to him. He has a near-encyclopaedic catalogue of tedious, inefficient, irrational social rituals and norms, but society has neglected to provide him with sufficient rationale to use them any more than ‘as infrequently as possible’. Courtship rituals are much the same—why bother contorting himself into a ridiculous parody of normalcy for people who invariably prove plebeian, selfish, willfully ignorant, or some unpalatable amalgam of all three?

 

            John upends all of it. He’s quiet and perfectly quotidian and _boring_ until something disturbs him, and then _oh,_ the rip current beneath the placid surface becomes evident, drab upper wings flick up and away to reveal flashing colour and the unswerving eyes of predators, honed steel glints from within the warm, lacquered oak of the gentleman’s cane—and then one recognises the quiet, not of a soft man, but of a man so self-contained that noise is unnecessary. John wears normal the way he wears his jumpers—a comfortable, unassuming woven cover that draws the eye away from the subtle hints of something extraordinary. Sherlock finds himself making concessions and changes he would never have entertained even in his deepest fits of ennui before meeting John Watson.

           

            It goes without saying that keeping John is his first priority, but now that John has initiated courtship with Mary—Mary, who is proving to be a different but equally interesting variety of quiet—and Mary has opened that courtship to Sherlock... Sherlock would be out of his depth if all three of them were only human. He doesn’t know the first thing about appropriate three-party courtship in sphinx culture.

 

            Granted, John probably doesn’t know either, but that hardly improves the situation.

 

            “It may be slow science,” he remarks, his voice level.

 

            Mary shrugs and smiles. “We have time,” she replies. “We have plenty of time.”

 

            ***

 

            Mary is quickly learning that Angelo is a meddler.

 

            Their table is tucked into the back corner of a section labelled _‘Reserved’_ and draped in white jacquard; the same candelabra from the interrupted dinner has been joined by a delicate blown-glass vase with three red roses. Sherlock, resplendent as ever in his purple Dolce and tailored Spencer Hart, looks somewhere between bored and confused. John just looks uncomfortable, though he smiles when he meets Mary’s eyes across the restaurant.

 

            Angelo sweeps out of the kitchen. “ _Bella!_ ” he crows, guiding Mary back to the table as proudly as if he’d picked her out and invited her there himself. He’s pulled out her chair and gestured for her to sit before John can even get to his feet. “I’ll be right out with the wine! Just you wait!” He twirls away, practically dancing as he disappears back into the kitchen.

 

            “I am so, so sorry,” John groans quietly. Sherlock doesn’t say anything, but his expression closely resembles the look on one of her secondary school classmates’ face when his mum had spent the whole day just hovering in the back of his classes. “We showed up and asked for a candle and it just...”

 

            “The wine!” Three crystal wineglasses are placed with expert care on the table. The wine is already uncorked; as Angelo deftly fills each glass, the crisp scent of a very, very high-quality wine fills the air.

 

            As soon as Angelo has bustled away, Mary gives Sherlock a raised eyebrow and a wry grin. “Someone is very, very eager to see you settled,” she teases gently.

 

            Sherlock sighs. “I proved that he was housebreaking halfway across London at the time of a particularly nasty triple murder.” He glances toward the kitchen, where the sounds of an overenthusiastic chef rallying his crew are distinctly audible to Mary’s sensitive ears. She glances at John just as something in the kitchen falls with a great clatter; they both burst into giggles immediately. Even Sherlock’s resigned mortification gives way to a half-smile. “He has since made it his personal mission to repay me.”

 

            “He brought us a candle the first time we ate here together,” John adds. The look he and Sherlock share reminds Mary of the one her parents used to give each other whenever they recounted some sort of shared anecdote or inside joke. “He’s hardly the only one that made the assumption, but he was certainly the most persistent.”

 

            Sherlock leans in suddenly and asks, apropos of nothing, “Have you considered a unit on bees?”

 

            John’s head drops into one open hand. “Oh god, not the bees again,” he groans.

 

            Mary sits back and laughs. “I haven’t, but if you’ve come up with something after nicking half my books on teaching primary science, I’m willing to listen.”

 

            Sherlock looks at John as if to say, ‘I never did such a thing!’ John lets out a longsuffering huff and elbows him. “She heard you, you git. Sphinxes, remember?”

 

            Affront and approval are at war on Sherlock’s face as he returns his attention to Mary. He seems to be weighing his options—withhold his ideas in petty revenge for the manipulation, or share them anyway as a reward for her unexpected guile?—so Mary decides to help him along. “You’re not bored.”

 

            Sherlock goes still and then, very slowly, smiles.

 

            He makes his pitch.

            

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It should be noted that I am not a teacher in the UK, nor do I represent the Michael Faraday School in any way. The Michael Faraday School is a real place, however (and a super cool one at that-- I'd be in seventh heaven to teach at such a place!), and they do in fact have an Outstanding grade from Ofsted (the UK's education inspection/regulation department). Mary's classroom setup (what little of it there is detailed, at least) is based primarily on my experiences in U.S. kindergarten/first grade classrooms. The rest of it is magic a la Google. Apologies for any errors. :x
> 
> Thank you so very much for joining me on this mad ride! It's been a real pleasure-- your comments, kudos, and support have been absolutely fantastic, and I can't thank you enough for it. I can only hope I've done right by you, dear readers, and that I'll continue to do so in future visits to this AU.
> 
> Thank you, thank you, thank you!  
> \- Z


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